Joseph Nicholson
To say there was a strong relationship between me and the car chasing Fast and Furious franchise would be an outright lie.
Of course, it is hard not to have noticed or even heard of the seven-movie strong series, the first of which aired in cinemas fourteen years ago back in 2001. I can’t say it’s ever been a choice I’ve made on the countless times I’ve been to the cinema. Never have I been in the cinema foyer where I’ve fallen ungraciously to my knees, tears streaming down my haggard face, while I curse the heavens above because I couldn’t decide between that or something else. In fact, I would have happily seen anything (and I mean ANYTHING) over something I believed to be about drag racing.
Imagine then the shear horror on my face, when a friend I’m visiting and staying with in Kingston suggests we go for a late-night screening of Furious 7. I have no choice but to sit back, get up to speed (pun intended) with the entire franchise plot as the film plays out and refrain from yelling out for the fifth time that the screen we’re sat in is bigger than all five screens of my local cinema put together.
It starts well with what I assume is a bridge from the previous instalment – swash buckling unshaven man’s man Jason Statham storms onto the screen, pissed off with the cast of Fast and Furious because they’ve hospitalised his brother (the baddy from #6) and wants revenge. He does not care how many buildings he may or may not destroy, because not only is he a man; he is an angry man, grr.
This of course leads to a two-hour rampage across Lois Angeles and beyond where the damage caused would surely have led to a thousand trees’ worth of paperwork. Of course, it’s better to let that play out off-screen.
On top of all this chaos is also the tragedy of co-lead actor Paul Walker who sadly died halfway through filming. (Paul is reincarnated with the help of his two brothers who make decent stand-ins – although I spent far too much time, working out where Paul left and his brothers came in).
The show however must go on and one unbelievable sequence of stunts leads to another and so do the shared facial expressions and whispers of ‘Err… what?’ between my friend and I every five minutes or so.
I spend the rest of the film thinking it’s actually a comedy rather than a serious action-thriller film, only the audience isn’t laughing during those inserted pauses after ‘jokes’ about how sexually appealing women are or when one character wants to take charge but doesn’t have a plan and
they all laugh. Ha ha ha.
No, we’re all giggling at the awful dialogue, delivered in a non-ironic way from serious angry faces (my favourite being ‘his mother is gonna wish she kept her legs closed’) and at how they can take thirty billion punches to the face, stomach and groin while still being able to stand up straight. Seriously, the only member of the cast who is hospitalised is Dwayne Johnson, who I believed to be quite unbreakable because of the whole ‘The Rock’ thing.
Towards the end of the flick, after half of L.A has been demolished from explosions and drone fire (is this a disaster movie now? Or… I don’t know anymore).
They all seem to have escaped unharmed. There’s a fitting(ish) tribute for Paul Walker who is written out in a way that leaves even a first-time watcher feel glum – methinks it was the lack of sleep from the night before.
It is all a little silly and mad – the storyline just bearable, the acting a little bit less. But if you want to escape the real world for a couple of hours and you have a spare tenner In your pocket, go have some fun watching A Little Chaos directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet, I hear it is rather good.
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Aesthetic Pleasure 