"Furious Seven" (2015)

This movie is dumb. Not just dumb, I rolled my eyes until they hit the back of my head. But that’s neither here nor there, the real story is that Paul Walker died during the making of this movie. Quite frankly, they really capitalized on it and, in a bizarre twist made it critic proof. Who in their right mind is going to call this garbage out for what it was? It’s a cut and paste job similar to how they solved Brandon Lee’s death during “The Crow.” There is no ending to which satisfies the story and the tragedy with a movie called “Fast & Furious” about reckless car driving and Walker dying in a fiery car crash.

I digress, the movie is not any good. It’s riding on an incredibly thin line of a revenge plot very poorly constructed as a man-o-man ending. It’s corny. And laugh at loud stupid. But…then again, which “Fast” wasn’t. Plus, it’s longer than fuck. Why? There’s a dumb riff with Tyrese about how he should be the leader of an “impossible mission” for what reason other than to have him inject a dumb idea with comedy. He fails miserably later on as he is called on to distract a whole Arab party with his comic styling. An AWFUL uncomfortable moment. Not one laugh from this audience.

Jason Statham is also really bad. He wasn’t called on to do much, but to retread his “Transporter” fight skills. He constantly shows up at just the right moments, and sometimes HIGHLY secure places, which we know by now, he’s so highly skilled, they think we don’t question it. Fine. But why also add in Djimon Honsou as THE OTHER BAD GUY? Oh right, the need to find a reason for Terminator Stratham to get out of a bind. Better yet, split the team up and conquer. There’s too much going on here. As it’s blown to ridiculous proportion by a drone chase through…an abandoned Los Angeles (what freaking apocalypse occurred where there’d be no traffic on 3^rd and Spring in downtown? I guess no one living here thinks the 9^th largest population per square foot, everyone would be inside. Collateral damage would’ve instantly gotten all these fools tossed into jail. And the worst of all…Kurt Russell. Shit man, “The Expendables” didn’t call. And here we are with the biggest (and my most painful) experience. Watching Kurt Russell, try to be Kurt Russell, but didn’t have enough space to pull this off. Goddamn it…you have Jack Burton on your hands, and all you can do is fill him full of the same crap dialogue as he did in “Tequila Sunrise.” Damn you guys. Speaking of crap dialogue, EVERYONE, and I was really surprised the dog walking on the street didn’t bark out a one-liner about how the bad guy was going to end up in a body bag. I’m not joking. In fact they did a back to back one. Toretto (Vin Diesel) mutters about how he’s going to take down the bad guy…then it cuts to Brian (Paul Walker) who (again I am NOT joking) says the same line differently. It was like when a actor gives three different versions of the same line to test the inflection. All to satisfy (presumably) trailer material. Just terrible.

And shame on Universal. Here’s the thing…it’s quite easy to take Paul Walker out…there’s a very TERRIBLE scene of Jordana Brewster (who’s looking more and more like a Kardashian) telling Walker on the phone that once he gets done with this job it’s over. This is all prefaced by the fact that they have one child and one child on the way. And a quick scene of a cliché mini-van comedy that tells us he misses his formal adrenaline fueled life. Nope. Don’t buy it. Brewster, would be an insane monster with him doing something…um…that required she hide out in the Dominican Republic. Common fucking sense. Boom, Walker is out of the movie. INSTEAD, and this is THE most shameful part of this movie, we’re left to wonder when they’re going to kill off Brian (Walker), or how it’s coming. They did an ingenious thing which was…put him in different scenarios or have him tell someone important and heartfelt moment. Oops…this could be his last. Nope, this is the last. Fuck! Can he say something heartfelt and then just die already. Fuck no. Shame on the powers that be. You milked Walker dry, rung out his spirit and then dedicate his corpse to him. That, to me, is the ultimate lesson about Hollywood. And it’s also that joke about hookers. What’s the difference between a studio executive and a hooker. A hooker will stop fucking you when you’re dead.

But I guess it’s all okay, because at the blessing of the Walker brethren, who took over as body and face doubles for Paul, they essentially raked in their own windfall. This movie is just subversively offensive. It gets their cake and gets to eat it too. And the fact that it destroyed box office, says more about us as a society. Actually this is a positive. The fact that people knew this movie was horrid, still supported it in tragedy. The one thing no one ever mentions…perhaps this was a crowd funding effort to the extreme. That people didn’t necessarily want to watch the movie nor cared whether it be good or bad, but by putting money into the till, they felt they gave back to Paul.

I don’t want to be a complete shit to Paul Walker, but I’m not so sure he had THAT much more in the tank, acting wise. I mean, Chris Pine pretty much snapped up all the darker movies, and the action genre has recently turned to Dwayne Johnson or Jason Stratham. It seemed he fell into the middle, being too pretty to fight, not muscle-y enough for fantasy or believe he was vulnerable and couldn’t get laid. I’m sure he spent a lot of rejection in roles due to this. Would he have the chops of Ryan Gosling? Probably not. He suffers the same fate as James Van Der Beek. Too WASP-y for the new society of our mutt-it-tude.