In yet another highly lucrative victory for
multicultural Australia, RMIT’s own Chinese-Malay-Australian filmmaker James
Wan takes the helm for the seventh outing of the Fast and Furious franchise.
Wan graduated from the SAW series,
via the ‘quiet-quiet-bang’ horror blockbusters Insidious and The Conjuring,
to this highest of high profile releases. From the first frame it’s clear Wan
is comfortable moving from his favoured ‘low budget / more creative control’
model, to working with quarter of a billion dollars and an already tightknit
clique of actors and producers.
Brought even closer by the untimely death
of lead actor Paul Walker, the team that makes Fast and Furious 7 both in front of and behind the camera are a
shining example of diversity and successful collaboration. When Vin Diesel
announced his daughter would be called Pauline in honour of Walker, it was no
headline-grabbing stunt. These actors are close and the Fast and Furious series is no brain-dead ego-driven blockbuster, it
just makes more money when it’s sold that way.
Lent unusual dramatic heft by Walker’s
death, the storyline is a committee-driven series of ludicrous setups that
permits even more ludicrous stunts (some performed by the rapper-turned actor
Ludacris) to take place with a joyful ignorance of insurance premiums.
And it’s fun. Lots and lots of fun.
We’re talking driving a Lykan Hypersport
out of the 45th floor of a skyscraper, INTO ANOTHER SKYSCRAPER sort
of fun. It’s like the producers supplied near illegal levels of sugar and an endless
supply of Matchbox cars to a group of seven-year olds and said ‘yes!’ to
everything they came up with.
What storyline there is involves bad guy
(Jason Statham) avenging the incapacitation of his brother (Luke Owens) in the
previous film, and our heroes fighting for their gritty-yet-affluent lives. The
plot also takes in a terrorist Jakande (a constantly agitated Djimon Hounsou)
and a government official called Mr Nobody (a wry ‘just-here-for-the-paycheck’
Kurt Russell) vying to steal some powerful spyware. It’s all just as daft as it
sounds, but somehow, amidst all the revving engines and breaking glass there is
time to get to know characters’ quirks and engage with their dilemmas, which
are usually solved by driving fast, firing guns or, in one memorable scene, flexing
a muscle.
Amidst the flying cars, furrowed brows,
convenient amnesia and hammy dialogue, possibly the most incredulous scene is
one in which an American government official congratulates a rogue hacker on a
job well done. Hey, it’s Hollywood!
While militarised drones, US covert ops and
mass surveillance figure largely in the film’s mechanics, screenwriter Chris
Morgan never aims higher than providing a skeleton for spectacular entertainment,
and why should he? Other less-seen and more acclaimed films can ask the
questions. Diesel and co have worked hard to make this franchise not only hilarious
fun, but also a showcase for a new definition of friends-as-family. Virtually all
non-explanatory dialogue is about the value of domestic relations, most notably
an extended postscript focusing on Walker and Diesel’s friendship. Even those
who haven’t seen previous instalments won’t have trouble in seeing how vital
Walker is to the series and how important he is to the others. And if you
haven’t it’s striking how involved you can become with the predicaments of
characters barely sketched. Even (Game of Thrones’) Nathalie Emmanuel’s Ramsey,
who is rarely in a non-life-threatening scene and never formally introduced to
anyone, stops to appreciate the affecting moment of Paul Walker fooling around
with his son and hugging his wife on a beach as the sun sets.
