The beauty of the “Fast and the Furious” movies is their simplicity. The high concept of the new film can be summed up in a handful of words—a dead man’s brother seeks revenge on the Toretto gang—but fans don’t flock to the films for the story, they come to see the wild celebration of muscle cars, muscle shirts and muscle heads, and in this, “Furious 7” does not disappoint.
The new film begins with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and company (Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Jordana Brewster) finally attempting to lead normal lives back in the United States. The timely wounding of mercenary and bad guy Owen Shaw (Luke Evans)—he was gravely injured in the last film when the Mercedes G463 he was in flew out of the cargo dock of a moving plane—was the last obstacle between the “F&F” crew and peace and tranquility. Trouble is, Owen’s older brother, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) wants revenge. Adding intrigue to the mix is a mysterious maybe-he’s-a-good-guy-maybe-he’s-not government operative named Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), beautiful hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel)—“That is a woman worth falling out of a plane for,” says Roman.—and a ruthless warlord (Djimon Hounsou) who yells “Get him!” every few minutes.
That’s it. After that it’s all snappy one-liners, wild car chases, fight scenes, etc.
You might want to have your cholesterol checked after “Furious 7.” This much cheese in one serving can’t be good for you. You may also get sunburnt from the reflected glare of all the explosions. The new “F&F” movie might not be good for you, but it is two hours and twenty minutes of no-airbag fun.
It’s also a further step toward the James Bonding of the series. But not the Daniel Craig 007. “Furious 7” has more in common with the realm of the ridiculous gadget heavy Bond movies that featured exotic locations, automobile acrobatics—there’s every kind of car crash here, including a wild car chase inside a luxury apartment!—and villainous characters. Not content with just one bad guy “Furious 7” offers up two, Statham as the revenge starved brother-on-a-mission and, as back-up, the trigger happy Hounsou
It also gives the silliest of Bond stories—I’m looking at you “Moonraker”—a run for its money. The plot isn’t as much a story as it is justification to put the characters in motion. Why risk life-and-limb to get access to a computer program that will help Toretto’s clan located Shaw when he seems to pop up around every corner? It’s the thing that fuels most of the action, and it makes absolutely no sense at all. At best it is an excuse to introduce Ramsey, the picture’s Bond girl.
Not that any of that matters. Audiences don’t go to the “F&F” movies to engage their brains; they go for the crazy stunts and the cocky swagger. They go for the “vehicular warfare,” the “No way!” moments and Diesel’s rumble and mumble line delivery. Here Vin goes head to head with Statham for the title of Gravelliest Voiced Action Star, and winds up in a tie.
Subtle it ain’t but that is the beauty of these movies. They know what they are and they deliver time in and time out. From Diesel’s “unleash the beast” scenes to mano- a-car action, “Furious 7” exists in its own ecosystem where Dwayne “Daddy’s got to go to work” Johnson’s can remove a cast from his broken arm by simply flexing his oversized biceps and cars can effortlessly glide from one high rise to another.
As important as the action are the camaraderie and loyalty. “I don’t have friends,” says Dom, “ I have family,” a point nicely made in a touching coda paying tribute to star Paul Walker who died in a car accident in November 2013.
“Furious 7” is a bit long—a movie like this should be a down-and-dirty eighty-eight minutes—but it’s also a loud-and-proud crowd pleaser that never misses a chance to rev its engine.
Furious 7 has already generated its share of column inches from entertainment journalists. The cast has spent the last few weeks doing the junket rounds, talking to everyone with a microphone or a notepad, generating sound bites and stories that have fed newspapers, websites and television shows.
Star Michelle Rodriguez, who plays Letty Ortiz, spoke of getting “pretty crazy” after co-star Paul Walker’s death. “I was pushing myself to feel,” she said by way of explanation of some of her tabloid level behaviour in the last year.
Ludacris, who has played technical expert Tej Parker in four F&F films, told the Today show, “We’re about to make history as the most successful franchise of all time.”
Vin Diesel has talked about naming his daughter after his friend and co-star Walker—“ “There’s no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting this umbilical cord.”—and made grand pronouncements about the quality of his film.
“Universal is going to have the biggest movie in history with this movie,” Diesel said, likely sounding as though he’s dragging every word through sandpaper. “It will probably win best picture at the Oscars, unless the Oscars don’t want to be relevant ever.”
He’s likely only half wrong. In 2011 he made a similar award season prediction about Fast 5 and while that didn’t pan out, the movie made a fortune, grossing north of six hundred million dollars worldwide.
He’s right to say that the new film will surely put the pedal to the metal and sell a lot of popcorn. Despite so-so reviews the Fast and Furious franchise has an EZ Pass to the box office fast lane, grossing two billion plus dollars since racing into theatres in 2001. “Just because they are for the working class doesn’t mean they’re not great,” Diesel said.
F&F fans enjoy the formula, which can be broken down to essentially this: Swagger interrupted by a snappy one liner, a wild car chase, a fight scene, repeat.
The movies aren’t Kierkegaard, and that’s one of the reasons they haven’t run out of gas yet. Over seven entries they’ve remained loud and proud, lowbrow and unashamed. They’re a wild celebration of muscle cars, muscle shirts and muscle heads. Like an engorged Hot Wheels set, the films are playthings for the directors—there have been 4 over the run of the series—who tow the company line time after time offering up a car crushing stew where sophisticated line readings and nuanced storytelling take a backseat to frenetic editing and in-your-face explosive action. They exist in a world where people only drink Budweiser and bastardizations like Bud Lime don’t exist. That purity of vision is the beauty of the series.
Sure, they change things up from time to time by adding new characters but casting The Rock or Jason Statham isn’t much of a stretch. Both have migrated from the kind of turbo charged action movies that could be considered companion pieces to the F&F films and both have the kind of poly-appeal that makes men want to be them and women want to see them.
Despite the loss of Paul Walker, you can bet Furious 7 won’t be the last movie in the series. As long as the formula works and the money continues to come in fast and furious Diesel and company won’t put these films in the rear view mirror.
In the upcoming film Kingsman: The Secret Service, Colin Firth plays a veteran of an independent international intelligence agency.
“The Kingsmen agents,” he says, “are the new knights.” He recruits a rookie (Taron Egerton) into the agency’s training program — “the most dangerous job interview in the world” — just as twisted madman Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), launches a plan to bring down the Kingsmen and cause world chaos.
Echoes of James Bond hang heavy over the story. There are suave spies, a warped villain in the vein of Dr. Julius No or Ernst Blofeld, an evil henchman, or in this case henchlady, named Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) who has knives where other people have feet. Above all, it has gadgets. Firth and his fellow agents — Michael Caine and Mark Strong — have umbrellas that deflect bullets and Zippo lighter hand grenades among other thingamajigs that no spy should leave home without.
Ever since 007 was kitted out with an attaché briefcase equipped with a folding sniper rifle, ammunition, a knife and 50 gold sovereigns in From Russia With Love, gadgets have become de rigueur in spy stories.
From jetpacks to a mobile phone with a stun gun and fingerprint scanner, Bond always had the coolest contraptions. His most famous gadget, the Aston Martin DB5, was introduced 22 minutes into Goldfinger. Bond’s big rig came fortified with machine guns, ejector seats, a back shield, oil slick, rotating licence plates and tire slicers.
The car has appeared in six movies with later models featuring upgrades like a rear facing water canon, a jetpack stowed in the trunk and a cloaking shield.
Bond’s awesome auto has inspired many other souped-up spy-mobiles, including the Pontiac GTO from xXx. Xander Cage’s (Vin Diesel) car came with stinger missiles, parachutes, a flame-thrower and exploding hubcaps.007 and xXx have sweet rides, but the Our Man Flint spy parody had the wildest stuff. Derek Flint’s (James Coburn) watch not only told time but doubled as a microscope and his lighter had “82 different functions,” he said, “83 if you want to light a cigar.”
In the upcoming film Kingsman: The Secret Service, Colin Firth plays a veteran of an independent international intelligence agency.
“The Kingsmen agents,” he says, “are the new knights.” He recruits a rookie (Taron Egerton) into the agency’s training program — “the most dangerous job interview in the world” — just as twisted madman Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), launches a plan to bring down the Kingsmen and cause world chaos.
Echoes of James Bond hang heavy over the story. There are suave spies, a warped villain in the vein of Dr. Julius No or Ernst Blofeld, an evil henchman, or in this case henchlady, named Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) who has knives where other people have feet. Above all, it has gadgets. Firth and his fellow agents — Michael Caine and Mark Strong — have umbrellas that deflect bullets and Zippo lighter hand grenades among other thingamajigs that no spy should leave home without.
Ever since 007 was kitted out with an attaché briefcase equipped with a folding sniper rifle, ammunition, a knife and 50 gold sovereigns in From Russia With Love, gadgets have become de rigueur in spy stories.
From jetpacks to a mobile phone with a stun gun and fingerprint scanner, Bond always had the coolest contraptions. His most famous gadget, the Aston Martin DB5, was introduced 22 minutes into Goldfinger. Bond’s big rig came fortified with machine guns, ejector seats, a back shield, oil slick, rotating licence plates and tire slicers.
The car has appeared in six movies with later models featuring upgrades like a rear facing water canon, a jetpack stowed in the trunk and a cloaking shield.
Bond’s awesome auto has inspired many other souped-up spy-mobiles, including the Pontiac GTO from xXx. Xander Cage’s (Vin Diesel) car came with stinger missiles, parachutes, a flame-thrower and exploding hubcaps.007 and xXx have sweet rides, but the Our Man Flint spy parody had the wildest stuff. Derek Flint’s (James Coburn) watch not only told time but doubled as a microscope and his lighter had “82 different functions,” he said, “83 if you want to light a cigar.”
Summer blockbusters haven’t been much fun this year. Sure, we’ve had giant robots, action galore and some edge of our seat moments, but from the xenophobia of “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” to the daddy issues and nuclear nightmares of “Godzilla” the season’s tent pole movies have been a bit gloomy.
“Guardians of the Galaxy,” the new Marvel adventure, is a tonic for the troops. An old-fashioned space opera, it’s a wild ride and the most pure fun blockbuster since the first “Iron Man” movie.
Chris Pratt is Peter Quill, a cosmic Indiana Jones style adventurer. After stealing a mysterious metal orb that containing an “infinity chip,” he becomes the target of Ronan (Lee Pace in full-on wrestling bad guy mode), an intergalactic Genghis Khan with ambitions to destroy his mortal enemies, the Xandarians. To avoid capture Quill forms an uneasy alliance with a genetically engineered raccoon and bounty hunter Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel), a plant-based humanoid, the deadly assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and a revenge hungry warrior named Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). As the chip’s power becomes obvious, the band of misfits slowly bond, becoming the Guardians of the Galaxy as they battle to keep the orb from Ronan.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” has a playful tone. From Pratt’s signature line, “Peter Quill, people call me Star-Lord,” to a soundtrack stuffed with 70s era pop music—like “Hooked On A Feeling” by Blue Swede and Rupert Holmes’s “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”—and actors in blue-headed alien masks, the movie feels like a throwback to old-school action-adventure.
It’s filled with one-liners, sight gags and funny moments that play off the more standard blockbuster-style action and battle scenes. Pratt has an offhand delivery that recalls Harrison Ford in Han Solo mode, Cooper does wisecracks like a skilled Catskills comic and (ALMOST A SPOILER) there’s Baby Groot to up the cute factor. They supply the light moments, but despite Cooper’s presence, this isn’t “The Hangover” in space, it’s an all out action movie with a blithe spirit.
On the downside, origin stories require set up and “Guardians of the Galaxy” has loads of backstory. There are characters with funny names, warring cultures and treaties to be enforced and broken. The exposition gets in the way of the story sometimes, but only occasionally. Director James Gunn doles out the information with spoonfuls of humor and action to keep things interesting.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” is clearly expected to be the beginning of a franchise. Near the end of the film Star-Lord says, “What shall we do now? Something good? Something bad? Bit of both?” and while that kind of presumptuous writing usually annoys me, in this case I wouldn’t mind seeing what they get up to next time.
I don’t know how much “Fast & Furious 6” cost to make. The huge cast must be raking in substantial paychecks by now and you’d need to be a mathematician to figure out the number of cars they destroy. Heck, just the screeching tire sound effect budget alone was probably worth more than
The new movie is the culmination of the previous five. A greatest hits—literally, there are some wild crashes here—featuring characters from most of the films in the series. All the old faves are back—drug lord Braga (John Ortiz), Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and even Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), who was presumed dead in the last installment—in a story that doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but if it was supposed to make sense it would be called “Sedans and Sensibility” or maybe “Of Miatas and Men.”
No, this is a “Fast & Furious” movie that plays fast and furious with believability but still delivers a pretty good time at the movies.
Picking up where “Fast Five” left off, when we first meet Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Company they are wealthy outlaws, living in countries with no extradition to the United States. Their quiet lives are disrupted when a gang led by super villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) stages a daring raid that threatens international security. A task force led by Hobbs (Johnson) calls on the expertise of the furious fugitives to help bring Shaw to justice. It becomes personal for Dom when he discovers that his former girlfriend Letty is working with Shaw.
These movies are review proof. If you liked the other movies in the franchise, you’ll like this one. It’s faster and furiouser than the others, so drenched in machismo—the women are even macho—you can almost smell the Brut cologne, but other than that it is essentially the same film.
It can be broken down to essentially this: Swagger interrupted by a snappy one liner, a wild car chase, a fight scene, repeat.
The themes of loyalty and friendship are still at the forefront, usually expressed in very dramatic dialogue delivered in the best teen noir style by Diesel who speaks every line as though he is dragging it through sandpaper but that wouldn’t mean much if cars don’t become air born before they burst into flames.
“Fast & Furious 6” puts the pedal to the metal one more time in a franchise that will eventually run out of gas, but for now is still running on fumes.
Knockaround Guys is an unremarkable coming-of-age story with a gangland twist. The four sons (Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Barry Pepper, and Andrew Davoli) of Brooklyn mobsters bond together to reclaim a quarter of a million dollars lost in a small Montana town run by a crooked sheriff (Tom Noonan). The money belongs to Matt Demaret’s (Pepper) dad, Benny “Chains” Demaret (Dennis Hopper) and his underboss Teddy Deserve (John Malkovich). If they don’t get it back, it’s one of the three Rs for them – roof, revolver or river. Written and directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the same team who wrote Rounders, Knockaround Guys has a straight-to-video feel to it, although the uninspired story is rescued by some very good performances. John Malkovich chews through the screen as Teddy, the conniving Brooklyn Mafioso, and Dennis Hopper is a pleasure to watch in his cameo appearance as the big boss. Of the younger actors, Canadian Barry Pepper shows his chops as the conflicted Matty, while Vin Diesel oozes charisma, but by the film’s closing scenes you wish that these talented actors had more of a script to work with.
Remember Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot? How about Junior featuring a pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger? What these films have in common is they represent action stars—men who made their names in movies bashing heads and shooting guns—trying to prove that they are more than just a muscle mass that got lucky in pictures and that they have the range to make us laugh. The latest to switch from cracking ribs to tickling funny bones is Vin Diesel. You’ll likely remember the bald, brooding actor from movies with macho names like XXX, Pitch Black or The Fast and the Furious, but after a couple of failed action flicks, he followed in the career rejuvenating footsteps of Schwarzenegger and Stallone and made a comedy—The Pacifier. In this film the six foot muscle man plays a Navy Seal assigned to protect a house full of out of control kids. It’s an amusing—but not particularly new—idea to cast the tough as nails army guy with these kids, but the movie never veers into laugh-out-loud funny. It works better on DVD than it did on the big screen, and I think kids under ten might enjoy it, but parents may want to watch something else.
In Vin Diesel’s fourth outing as the mercenary-turned-enforcer, he has been double-crossed and left for dead. “I don’t know how many times I’ve been crossed off the list,” he mumbles in voiceover, “but this ain’t nothing new.”
He spends his days battling predatory aliens until not one, but two teams of bounty hunters land on the planet. The first team, lead by Santana (Jordi Mollà) wants Riddick dead so they can collect the ransom. The other team, headed by Boss Johns (Matt Nable) wants him taken alive for questioning. As the bounty hunters bang heads, Riddick plans a wild scheme of vengeance and escape from this desolate planet.
With its cheap effects, cheesy dialogue, gratuitous nudity and testosterone-laced characters, “Riddick” might provide midnight movie style nostalgia for anyone who grew up on direct-to-video sci fi flicks in the 1980s. Everybody else might want to go back to the original movie in this series, Pitch Black, and enjoy a movie that actually kinda makes sense.
Saddled with a leaden and confusing backstory about a father’s quest for answers and a dull monotonous visual look the movie never rises above the level of a mid-grade video game.
On top of that, this is the rare movie that is actually better when the star isn’t in it. Although some of the creatures are pretty cool, this movie doesn’t work at all until Vin gives up the solo Survivorman shtick and the bounty hunters show up. Then, for my money, it changes from surreally bad film to a typical silly-bad movie.
You want silly? How about fending off a vicious dog-creature by starting an impromptu game of fetch? Or maybe using words like “jamoke” in the far distant future. If “Riddick” had embraced its silliness instead of taking itself so seriously in all the wrong ways, I might have enjoyed it more!
