Paul Walker
Review: Fast & Furious 7
The Pitch: I didn’t think there was any way I could top the stupidity of my Fast & Furious 6 review. Well…
The Limerick Review (BOOM! In your face, stupidity):
There once was a man named Rob Cohen Who got this film / car series goin' He directed the first, With his camera immersed In car's exhausts, constantly flowin'. Next, sequels; but Diesel was missing, Then Walker too his role dismissing, As the quality waned We were less entertained And critics were ranting and hissing. But Justin Lin then had a great thought: The cast from the first film were all sought For more thieving car stunts, Once more with Vin's deep grunts For his girl died (or so he had thought). The fifth film showed yet more evolving, The casting door still was revolving, With the stars back en bloc They then added The Rock, So cheesy but oddly involving. The sixth sorted out continuity, But its plotting was lacking acuity. Yet the post-credits scene Kept the audience keen: Add The Stath? Oh what great ingenuity! Wait! The promise of bald Jason's madness Was tempered with deep real-life sadness For Walker died too young; His virtues were then sung. The films had no choice but to digress. The Paul Walker issue's a distraction For he'd only filmed half his action. His brothers helped out And CG's pixel clout Gave once again narrative traction. A year late comes this sixth film sequel, The Stath now arriving to wreak hell Avenging Luke Evans (Near sent to the heavens); Can only be tracked by Kurt Russell. (The adding of Kurt ain't for nuthin': The man behind this film's MacGuffin. By hiring Snake Plissken There's less of a risk in Him fading away to a has-been.) Our gang tours the world with Stath chasing, With barely a mention of racing But cars are the main tools With which they make big fools Of logic, and physics debasing. The main draw's the film's whack set-pieces Whose grasp on the real world decreases With cars in the sky In the blink of an eye; Admit it, the script's mostly faeces. You may think it of me quite petty To complain of amnesiac Letty; There's now so much plot In these films, I forgot! The story's more strands than spaghetti. The emotional core's based on family; A shame that side's handled so hammily. Yet wide demographics Like flashy car graphics - Thank casting spread wide geographically. There's so many stars, some neglected: The Rock's presence barely detected. We lost Han Seoul-Oh And Gisele (Gal Gadot)... Wait, that t's pronounced. (Rhyme rejected.) Not even two deaths have helped thin out The bloated cast list; yet they win out. They might just enchant ya With their cheeky banter And car stunts which might get your grin out. This time Lin has gone, Wan's arriving, Saw's James this time wrangling the driving. This director-for-hire Doesn't raise standards higher His style from the genre deriving. His one fetish greater than fast cars Is his lens outlining each girl's arse As each one that's hot Wanders into his shot Their bottoms are making them film stars. Overall, Fast 7's not realistic Its scenery's quite chauvinistic But if you like a laugh You could do worse by half Than the year's big box office statistic.
Why see it at the cinema:
If you like fast cars and loose women, Then don't hesitate, drop your linen, Get straight down to the flicks For big stunts and hot chicks. (If you miss it you'll be forgiven.)
What about the rating?
The BBFC gave a 12A You'll find out at this link what they say. They gave it for swearing And violence; They're caring About all film viewers. (Not child's play.)
My cinema experience:
A Stevenage Cineworld threesome, (For which I will not give a reason) I also saw two more. The others that I saw Weren't bad either, despite no Liam Neeson.
They did have Russ Crowe and Ben Stiller, With this film to their sandwich: filler. The Water Diviner Was slightly less finer And While We're Young wasn't a killer.
The Score: 7/10
Review: Fast Five
The Pitch: It’s between The Rock and some real hard cases.
The Review: Can it really be ten years since Rob Cohen gave us The Fast And The Furious? It seems so long ago now that it’s difficult to remember what it was all about all those years ago, and as the series has gone on it’s become more and more removed from those humble beginnings. Sorry, did I say humble? I meant to say outlandish, garish and injected directly into your eyeballs. Very much style over substance, it did see Vin Diesel at the height of his early career (and, for that matter, Paul Walker, but since his career has consisted almost entirely of these movies, that’s maybe a little misleading), and they seemed to be heading the way of almost every other diminishing returns franchise. Then something strange happened: Justin Lin, director of the third movie in the series, also got the fourth and persuaded both Walker and Diesel to return for the first time together since the original, he widened the scope of the movie and took it away from street racing a little, and it romped to the biggest opening weekend in April in US box office history, and the biggest take of the franchise. So Fast Five does what every good big budget sequel does, and takes those successful elements and cranks them up a couple of notches.
This time, then, rather than just Walker and Diesel (and Jordana Brewster as Walker’s girlfriend and Diesel’s sister), pretty much everyone who’s had a speaking part and is still alive among the good guys is back. Indeed, death is not an obstacle, as one of the crew died in the third outing, Tokyo Drift, making this a sequel to the prequel to that film. Still paying attention? Well don’t worry, the movie opens directly where the fourth one finished, just in case you’ve forgotten (I had) and from there the pace doesn’t let up, at least for the first half an hour or so. Now on the same team again, Brian O’Connor and Dominic Toretto attempt to pull a job in Brazil, which goes wrong, so to get the bad guys and the cops off their backs they attempt one last job, which requires the intervention of the whole crew. But remember that job before the last job that went wrong? That’s attracted the attention of the Feds, and when they want someone caught (not that often, it would seem), there’s only one man they call for.
Special Agent Brian Hobbs. Better known to us, of course, as Dwayne Johnson, and even better known as The Rock. The testosterone is ramped up to hitherto unprecedented and frankly dangerous levels, and most of the middle of the movie consists of planning, scheming and a fair bit of posturing. The series has survived and thrived by evolving, so street racing is almost now an afterthought – you get one, and even that’s glossed over fairly quickly, and a second happens off-screen – and Fast Five comes over as the mutant love-child of Heat and Ocean’s Eleven, set in Rio. The cop / criminal face-off in which no-one gets arrested, the massively weighty cast, and even a high-powered shoot-out in the favelas all call to mind a dumbed-down version of Michael Mann’s finest, but the nature of the heist itself, some tricky reversals and the dialogue all give mind to a similarly low rent version of Steven Soderbergh’s movies.
Yes, the dialogue. Let’s test your level of potential interest for Fast Five. If quotes such as “This just went from Mission: Impossible to Mission: In-freakin’-sanity” or “Sexy legs, baby, what time do they open?”, at which point said sexy legs owner pulls a gun on their admirer, don’t put a giant smile on your face at the sheer dumb bravado of it all, then this is not the film for you. Similarly, if you’re not impressed by films that defy the laws of physics, ignore the fact that to pull this job, our heroes have a seemingly limitless supply of cash or that people swap sides almost at will, then this also isn’t the film for you. But if you’re looking for one of the most enjoyably simple, ridiculously hyped action movies of this or any other summer, then step right in. There’s a ten minute sequence around an hour and a half in where it all takes itself far too seriously, but other than that this will slap a big cheesy grin on your face and keep it there right through to the extended finale and a credits sequence that twists the franchise into the shape ready for its next inevitable outing. Fast Five features some of the most wanton destruction ever committed to celluloid, and if you’re looking for a way to disengage your brain ready for the summer season, then look no further.
Why see it at the cinema: The action scenes are what modern cinemas were made for, with director Lin making the finale look like Bad Boys 2 times The Blues Brothers in terms of carnage, and there’s plenty of sweeping vistas to make the most of the screen. It’s also the closest to a party atmosphere you’ll get in the cinema this early in the summer.
The Score: 7/10
The Movie Evangelist 