Review: Fast and Furious 7 (aka Furious 7)

I want to make it clear, first and foremost, anyone dying is a tragic thing, Paul Walker was far too young and his career was only just beginning. I don't want my opinion of this film to be considered disrespectful.

Furious 7 is so, so far from what the franchise used to be that I found myself ceasing to care. When did this series forget it is about cars?

Set after the events of Fast and Furious 6, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his friends, excuse me “family”, become targets for Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) who is out for revenge after they killed his brother. Toretto's team is recruited by a shadowy covert operation to hunt Shaw down, but to do so they need a device called The God Eye, a computer hacking tool that can simultaneously access all of the cameras in the world.

This film has excessive action sequences, often running for twenty minutes or more at a time, explosions, attack helicopters, predator drones, hundreds of half naked women everywhere, flashy cars for no reason at all, bad jokes, product placement, over-long running time and most of all lazy writing. Sounds familiar right? Yet unlike many Michael Bay films this gets a free pass from critics?? This is appalling.

At first I had high hopes; the opening features Dom attempt to remind his Amnesia-saddled girlfriend Letty of her past by taking her to Race Wars (a key moment in the first film) as well as his visit to Tokyo and speaking to the forgotten lead actor Lucas Black from the third film Tokyo Drift. An early bout between Statham and Dwayne Johnson's returning Agent Hobbs was also excellent. 

But it lost me after the sky-diving cars (yes, sky-diving cars, if you haven't seen the trailer) when our heroes, for the most redundant reason ever, must go to Abu Dhabi. After a manic mountainside battle they somehow go to Dubai in the flashiest super cars which even Toretto wouldn't drive. A Bugatti Veyron, seriously? Where did they get one of those? From the local Dubai Veyron rental service??

Going to Dubai is because a chip required for the God Eye device had been installed in a super car... literally no reason why. This makes the sixth movies' idea of putting a valuable microchip inside a tank inside an armoured motorcade seem believable!

But why all of this nonsense? Why do we need a God Eye device? Because Jason Statham's character is so skilled that he can virtually teleport around the world completely untraceable. Or as I like to call it: lazy writing.

The film is a constant, constant battlefield after the first twenty minutes. Not only do we have Statham appearing randomly throughout, but we also have Djimon Hounsou as a... a... bad man? The character development is astounding. We have his stock Asian martial artist, as well as a random burly woman in a dress for Michelle Rodriguez to fight once.

This review is going on a bit, but this film is just immature nonsense; a weird mash of Mission Impossible, Michael Bay films and The Expendables.

The action sequences when appreciated in isolation are impressive, that scene in Abu Dhabi is awesome and certainly something I've never seen before... But I need story substance and narrative cohesion to care; the Fast films used to have some semblance of structure to them, now its just a barrage of noise.

Review: Hummingbird

Its another Jason Statham movie! January? More like... Stathuary!

Joseph is an ex-soldier who had operated in the middle east, now he is a homeless thief in London. When a girl he knows disappears he gets his act together as a paid thug for a Chinese crime network, stealing another man's identity along the way. However his immoral lifestyle is countered by Cristina, a nun working in the mission that had helped him and other homeless people.

Unlike every other Statham movie (very much its own genre at this point) Hummingbird is a surprisingly morose, quiet and involving film. Statham's Joseph is a troubled man tormented by visions on his past, living in a state of desperation. I'll be honest, I didn't even recognise him for the first few minutes of screen time!
This troubled and tired Statham is almost completely lost when his character breaks into an apartment and tidies himself up. I was afraid good ol' Jason was back already and the film would descend once more into a mire of shoot outs.
But, amazingly, it didn't. Cristina (Agata Buzek) holds just as much of the screen as he does, and brings a lot of conviction in her role. As a result a more human Statham is expressed as the plot dabbles with their relationship and how Joseph's character can possibly find peace.

But... the film is quite clunky too. For all its pacing, quiet moments and focus on character building Hummingbird didn't feel like it knew what it was doing. Joseph's objective isn't clear, and while the interaction with Cristina is great, half-way through you might be asking yourself: "Why is any of this happening?"
Trying to write a synopsis for this film is difficult, put it that way.

I enjoyed it for the atmosphere, for seeing Statham in a more challenging role, and seeing a film providing deeper characters for him to play off of.
It isn't your typical Statham flick; if you are looking for his usual brawls and shoot outs you will be disappointed (you might even turn it off thirty minutes in!) but if you're like me and want to see him do something different, give it a shot.

 

Review: Safe

It's another Jason Statham movie!

A young girl Mei has a gift of remembering numbers and after being used by the Triads to hold the combination to an important safe, she is pursued not only by them but also corrupted cops and Russian mobsters. Only Jason Statham can protect her!

It is funny how the man is literally his own genre of movies nowadays... I'd have to look up IMDB just to remember his character's name because it was so underused, relinquished as a subheading beneath his own name.
That in a way sums up Safe quite nicely; it is a film without any substance or story or integrity, it just blasts along with the pacing of an unloading Uzi and the character relationship of a punch to the head.

It starts out with some questionable editing choices; scenes are shredded together like some sort of ransom note, Statham's story told quietly next to Mei's own backstory. Mei's story told initially with a cumbersome flashback-within-flashback nonsense that really took me out of caring. Statham however, was more intriguing at first. His character... oh okay, I'll look up the name... Luke Wright (giggle, Look Right) starts out broken and lost, far from the usual self confidence we see from Statham. Interesting!
But, somewhere down the line he turns back into the bad-ass we all know, and the film too dissolves into a manic chase with Mei becoming little more than an object, a ball being passed to and from players in a match. Gun battles, some exposition, more gun battles.

Which is kinda sad... there's a lot of potential squandered between Mei and Look Right, I would have liked to see the grisly bodyguard finding himself through the need to protect the child... but nope. That only surfaces right at the end of the film, after we've forgotten everything that happened in the first five minutes.

It is a Jason Statham movie, you already know if you are going to like it or not. Tonnes of gun fights, loads of Statham punching and killing people to a perpetual background noise of innocent screaming.
For Statham, it ain't bad, for a waste of time it isn't bad either. Just dial your expectations down!

Additional Marshmallows: At least Safe had the decency to have its foreign characters speak their own languages when they should! Subtitles and all! Unlike... oh, I don't know... Spielberg's own Warhorse!

Review: The Expendables 2

The Expendables was the definition of "damp squib", underwhelming and not even respectful of the old action movies. However the sequel... as surprising as it sounds... was actually pretty fun!

The sequel acts well as a standalone feature since I couldn't remember anything of the first film. Sly Stallone's mercenary team is seen rescuing a Chinese delegate and... Arnold Schwarzenegger's character... in an exciting vehicular attack on an occupied city. However their next mission proves to be even more challenging.

It feels more like a proper testimony to the classic action movies; each actor gets a signature fight or moment, reminiscing glory days and the action is far more eye-catching and creative this time around. The bonus comes from having Van Damme as the villain, while he may not do very much, at least he has some charisma and memorable moments.
I was also impressed that the writing was actually better, in that the comedy was actually fun and not devastatingly dull. It feels like they are enjoying themselves and not wallowing in "we're too old for this" dialogue.

Drawbacks. Well, I was sad to see Jet Li dropping out so early on (he was easily the best part of the first film) and Bruce Willis and Schwarzenegger seem to have limited screen time again so the film can focus on the original team. Slightly disappointing, but the finale has some great moments with those two: "My shoe's bigger than this car!"
The storyline is paper thin and transparent, the film only lasts an hour and a half (with some rather dodgy editing) but this isn't anything unexpected!

It is big and very dumb, but at least memorable. It is a constant gun battle, leaping from one set piece to the next, rarely catching a breath. It is a testimony, like Grindhouse and Black Dynamite, it is entertainment.

Additional Marshmallows: Great to see a film that is actually... violent! There's blood splattering everywhere, people getting stabbed, cut and shot to ribbons! If anything The Expendables 2 is worth watching just for that, in this 12A infested age.