Despite how unanimously enjoyed the films are now, I can’t exactly recall when this series became such a global phenomenon. I remember for a while I assumed it was some sort of unspoken agreement that despite the films being so critically vulnerable, everyone would simply go to the cinema. Yet I think it was around ‘Fast Five’ (Why it can’t just be Fast & Furious 5 I do not know) that I realized, the films are not for critics, they are for audiences.

‘Furious 7’ is delightfully crazy, it becomes clear within the opening fight between Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), that realism does not exist in the universe, and frankly, that made it even better. When you stop caring about logistics, this becomes a fast paced, funny, and most importantly fun 2 hours in the cinema. A sequence in which the team drive their cars out of a plane and free-fall for 3 minutes of delightfully corny banter only to parachute onto a road is the standout moment here. Yet everything else is just as beautifully insane, from driving through multiple Abu Dhabi skyscrapers due to breaks inexplicably failing on a multimillion dollar supercar, to Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) inexplicably surviving two or three ridiculous car crashes.

My problems with the film are not with its lack of realism at all in fact, but with it’s underutilization of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Every time he is on the screen, his sheer size and charisma really do make everything three times as enjoyable, so it is a little frustrating to see him so underused here. Furthermore, Letty’s (Michelle Rodriguez) subplot involving memory loss is thoroughly uninteresting, and I found myself getting more and more frustrated with director James Wan as he kept attempting to direct the audiences focus to this.

There are a whole lot of other plot holes and writing problems in the film I could mention, but if you are going to see this movie, you won’t care, and you shouldn’t. The films climax is intense, crazy fun (‘The Rock’ shines here), and to top it all off, the film concludes with a perfect and beautiful tribute to the late Paul Walker.

See it for:

– The thrilling Abu Dhabi and Parachute sequences

– If you like the word ‘family’

– ‘The Rock’ breaking an arm cast with his sheer awesomeness

Don’t see this if:

– you are easily put off by plot holes

– you are easily put off by a lack of realism

– you are expecting Sorkin level dialogue

– you are easily irritated by overly revealing (Michael Bay-style) shots of countless unlisted women (give it a miss, 70% of the Tumblr community)

Overall Score: 6.8/10