This site is dedicated to the restoration and preservation of 1960's and '70's Musclecars. I will answer any and all questions about what is original, and what are "Period Correct" modifications. I will also post my personal opinion about what is and is not proper. People are encouraged to debate me or share their own opinions or experiences.
Friday, April 10, 2015
"Fast&Furious 7" is a horrible mess....
Took my 12 year old nephew to see "Furious 7" this past weekend and even he said-"You can't do that" "He'd be dead." Not just once, but at almost every turn from beginning to end. It's that bad. Let me explain. You know from the teaser at the end of "F&F 6" that Jason Statham is the bad guy in this one. He's the brother of Owen Shaw-the villian in "F&F 6". The film opens with FBI Agent Hobbs-Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in his office saying goodnight to the hot Brazilian girl cop he recruited in "Fast Five". He finds Statham at his desk using his computer and they threaten each other verbally and then fight. I personally like Jason Statham as an actor / athlete-he's a talented martial-artist. But he's about 5'10" and 190 lbs. The Rock is 6'5" and 275 lbs with 6% body fat. In a real fight-I think Johnson would win easily. Like Oddsmaker Jimmy "The Greek" used to say-"The race may not always be to the swift, or the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." Anyhow-they have a brutal fight-punching and kicking each other in the ribs, the face,throwing each other through plate glass partitions, smashing each other into desks, etc. In reality-after a minute or two-they'd both be awaiting an ambulance with broken jaws, broken ribs, punctured lungs, busted knees, etc. Except here neither man gets so much as a bloody nose. They also pull guns and exhange gunfire-not hitting anything when Statham pulls an incendary explosive device of some kind out of his pocket which blows the Rock and the Brazilian babe out the window and they fall 2 stories and land on a car. The babe is unscathed-( How do you get blown though a plate-glass window and not get cut? ) because she landed on the Rock. Mere hours later he's sitting up in the hospital with a cast on his left arm trading insults and sarcasm with Vin Diesel. ( Dominic Toretto ). He tells Diesel about Statham. In the next scene Mia-( The smokin' hot Jordana Brewster-she gets hotter with age if that's possible ) is visiting Dom and complaining about her marriage. Apparantly having the 10 million bucks they stole from the Brazillian drug king in F&F 5 and a pardon from the Justice Dept and living happily ever after with Mia and their baby isn't enough for Brian O' Connor. ( The now-deceased Paul Walker ). He "Misses the bullets". At this point-Diesel get's a phone call from Statham and his house blows up. Now he's pissed. At Han's funeral, he sees Statham cruising the cemetary in an Aston Martin DB9. He gives chase in a 440 / Six-Pack 1970 GTX. They play "Chicken" and hit each other head-on at like 60 mph. And then get out-of course neither man has a scratch. Statham pulls a gun-but before he can shoot Diesel, Kurt Russel and a team of heavily armed Commandos show up and Statham flees. Somehow Dominic Toretto has morphed from a street-racing thug into James Bond. Russel is a CIA type who wants Toretto to rescue a master computer hacker who invented a state of the art satellite tracking system and is being held by a third-world dictator. If he retrieves the sytem-Russel will let him use it to find Statham. They drop cars out of airplanes to rescue the computer whiz. Now I know the military did this with Hummers during Desert Storm-but they were dropping them in a general area of a huge desert. You CAN"T drop cars out of airplanes with parachutes onto a narrow two-lane mountain highway with pinpoint accuracy. You can't. They do. During this road rescue-Paul Walker gets into a Kung-Fu fight with an Asian thug on the bus that was transporting the computer wiz-who surprise-is a smokin' hot woman that Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson argue over who has "dibs" on her. Anyway the Asian guy bails just before the bus starts to fall off a cliff. In a totally impossible scene that's obviously CGI-Walker races up the roof of the bus and as it falls he leaps toward solid ground and miraclously grabs the spoiler on a Challenger that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) slides up in at the last possible second. Right. The hacker gave the flash drive with the satellite surveillence sytem to a friend, and he sold it to a Sheik in Dubai. So the crew goes to Dubai to steal it from the Sheik. He has it stashed in his multi-million dollar sports car of which there's only 7 of which he keeps in his penthouse on top of a huge skyscraper. ( Why would you keep a car in a Penthouse? ) Ludacris and the hacker try to circumvent the security system while Michelle Rodriguiez-who was murdered in F&F 4 and amazingly returned from the dead in F&F 6-and has amnesia-is trying to find a phone jack they can hook their hacking equipment to-while Walker and Diesel try to find the flash drive in the car. Here's a cameo by super-hot women's UFC Champion Ronda Rousey as one of the Sheik's babes / bodyguards. And it's totally wasted. All the women at this swanky party are wearing evening gowns and heels. Rousey's in a gold dress and Rodriguez is in a Red one. Rodriguez whomps the ass of a few male guards, then encouters Rousey. They could have had a cool, sexy girl-girl fight scene, but the director totally blows it. I'd have had Rousey choke Michelle out with a sleeperhold and then call in "All ok" on her dress-mounted microphone. Then Michelle could wake up and smash Ronda in the knee and the mouth. They could kick off their heels, start to fight, the dresses get ripped to hell and they have to finish the fight topless and barefoot or at least in their underwear. They could have had Rousey use all her MMA moves-arm-bars,leg-scissors, figure-four leg-locks,and had Rodriguez use her ghetto moves-hair pulling, eye-gouging, scratching, biting, head-butting, hitting in the groin,etc. Now THAT would have been worth the price of admission. Instead-we get lightning-quick camera cuts as the throw each other around in a blur of red and gold fabric. You can't see who's doing what to who, and you can't see their faces-it could have been two stunt MEN wrestling in those dresses!! After a minute or two of this-they fall over the railing on the top floor and land on a table on the dance floor, which knocks Rousey out, but only stuns Rodriguez, who limps away with Tyrese Gibson. Diesel and Walker then jump the sports car from one skyscraper to another, not once, but twice. Really? If you drove a 3,000 lb car out of a skyscraper's top floor-you would fall to the ground and die, or splatter on the walls of the other building and fall to the ground and die. The chance of you crashing through a window onto a floor is so impossible...Well it's just impossible. Then they go back to Los Angeles where their pursued by the dictator and half his army with planes helicopters and drones. Now how a foriegn national got all these military aircraft into United States airspace over a major city like L.A.-especially in our post 9/11 world without being shot down by the U.S. Military-is a huge question that goes unanswered. He wrecks half the city pursuing the crew in their musclecars. Until the Rock gets out of his hospital bed, breaks out of his cast by simply flexing his biceps, steals an ambulance and drives it off an overpass into the drone, totalling the amabulance and the drone. And he of course emerges from the wreck without a scratch, and shoots down some helicopters with a machine-gun. Diesel and Statham have another head-on collision in two more cars-and again emerge without a scratch. And even though he's got a sawed-off shotgun,and he's pissed about Statham killing Han and blowing up his house, he doesn't shoot him. They pick up tire irons and have a fight. Again-they hit each other in the head, the ribs, the arms, the legs, etc with the iron bars and don't get multiple broken bones, and concussions no-they get nary a scratch. Then even though a parking garage falls on Statham and Diesel takes out a helicopter with a Charger-they both survive-with nary a scratch-Statham goes to jail and Diesel and friends go to the beach to see Walker and Jordana Brewster. Again-no gratuitous bikini scene for Brewster-( Bastards!!-we got Gal Gadot in a bikini in F&F 5 and Eva Mendes in 2 Fast 2 Furious, but no Jordana in 7 films??!! ) Like Ditka says-"Come on, Man!". Then Diesel leaves in yet another Charger, and Walker catches him in a white 98 Toyota Supra and says-"You can't leave without saying goodbye." "There's no goodbye." Diesel says and they take different roads. Diesel does a voice over about how Walker will always be with him and always be his brother. The problem I have, is since this stinker grossed 144 million bucks on it's first weekend, it's going to be a blockbuster, which means there will probably be an "F&F 8". But they didn't kill Walker's character in this one-so how are they going to explain his absence in the next one? Are they going to say that he and Jordana Brewster went somewhere to live happily ever after and let Diesel,Rodriguez, Gibson, and Ludacris go on the next Bond / Jack Ryan / Jack Reacher type adventure that Hobbs comes up with? God, I hope not. Mastermind
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