About.com Rating

Let us now praise the Fast and Furious films -- not for their quality, which can of course vary wildly, but instead for their nature, the way they metamorphosed over time from a series-starting B-movie about racing and robbery back in 2001 to its current form, a globe-trotting action-thriller series that turned our original anti-heroes into something like spies without portfolio. Directed by James Wan -- who steps into the very large boots of Justin Lin in both style and sensibility -- Furious 7 takes the basic shape of the films at this point and adds to it.

Recent Fast and Furious films, from about 4 on, have succeeded by executing a simple set of plot points and set-pieces: Take the characters around the globe, feature them in some crazed automotive action and/or fisticuffs, travel to another location and repeat. Furious 7  improves on this seemingly nigh-perfect system in one way and one way alone: Here, the films take the characters around the globe, feature them in some crazed automotive action and/or fisticuffs, have Jason Statham show up out of nowhere to try and kill all of them, travel to another location and repeat.

It's a minor addition, and yet it means so much. Continuing after the events of 2013's Fast and Furious 6, Furious 7 strips its usually frills-free musclecar filmmaking style down to the frame, with Statham out to avenge his brother Luke Evans, the baddie of Furious 6. The seeds of this plot have been planted for a while; the furious films have morphed into somehow being about 'family,' with Statham's wounded fury aimed right at Dom (Vin Diesel) and his gang.

If you take a shot every time someone in Furious 7 says 'Family,' you win nothing, as this is a film, and not a drinking game; however, you will soon start to mind it a lot less every time someone says 'family,' which is a victory in its own way.

The stunt work and effects work is all top-notch, with dedicated action performers like Statham, Diesel and Dwayne Johnson doing a lot of the brawling themselves; the presence of Tony Jaa and Ronda Rousey among the actors who bring their fighting styles and skills to the film is also welcome. Those grounded fights and stunts help the film a lot considering how when the film isn't giving us bone-crushing mano-y-mano action, it's using computer-generated and real vehicles to do all kinds of derring-do.

There are points in this film, in fact, when the laws of physics are not merely bent and not simply broken but instead told to leave the room and come back when they're told it's safe. At one point in this film, a driving vehicle crashes down on one that can fly; later, a wheeled vehicle rises up to attack a flying one. These scenes don't break the sense of reality in the new-school Fast and Furious films; rather, they are the reality in the new-school additions to the franchise.

In terms of the sad and unavoidable fact that Paul Walker, who started these films and came back to them in no small part to help save them, passed away during filming, its to the credit of all involved that it's dealt with as well it is.. The technical trickery required to let Walker stay in the film is occasionally shaky and underdone, but the writing -- by Chris Morgan, who has shaped and shepherded this series since the third entry -- that was added with the aim of easing Walker's character out of the films is actually deft and dignified, even if it takes up no small amount of time.

It's not that the Fast and Furious films have somehow broken the mold and re-written the playbook on big-money blockbuster filmmaking; rather, it's that they changed themselves to better fit the mold and executed the playbook better than anyone else. Dom Toretto once noted how he lived his life a quarter-mile at a time, and this series has done almost the same thing, making it from film to film and swerving as it went in order to survive. The Fast and the Furious has made too much money to ever stop -- even without Walker -- and we'll probably get exactly that, but the nicest thing I can say about Furious 7 is that if it were the end, it'd be a fine and fitting one.