Wan: Fast & Furious 7 (2015)

Over the last decade and a half, the Fast and Furious films have expanded their cast to become one of the most realistic representations of America today, taking us into the heart of a country that is predominantly Hispanic and African-American – though by no means prejudiced against whiteness – and is driven by broader, homosocial and homoerotic ideas of family and fraternity than you usually find in blockbuster Hollywood. For obvious reasons, Fast and Furious 7 takes stock of that situation and, although it’s quite poignant to see Paul Walker acting in what would turn out to be his final film role, the film itself tends to shy away from anything too morbid or tragic, placing him in one comic near-death situation after another, and writing him out of the franchise with a soulful retirement narrative that makes peace with his legacy in quite a tactful, respectful and lyrical way. In fact, the lingering impression is of his resilience, endurance and survival more than anything else, especially in the last couple of scenes, where you really get a sense of how much he’ll live on in the minds of the characters, cast and audience, as well as how much his rapport with Vin Diesel evolved into one of the great serial romances of the 00s and 10s. Nevertheless, it necessarily jettisons some of the wit and irreverance of mid-period Fast and Furious films to achieve that, not least because The Rock is now relegated to a side character, with Tyrese and Ludacris taking over the comic reins with a little less dynamism and a little less of a taste for the preposterous. Still, that works well with this most melodramatic installment in the series so far, as does Vin Diesel’s melodramatic delivery, which has never had quite as much flow as it does here, drawing all the dialogue into its parsed-out, slow-mo hip-hop diction as never before. Where this film does expand upon mid-period Fast and Furious films – and Fast Five in particular – is in the way it continues to move further away from illegal street racing in the direction of heist action. Make no mistake, car chases are still at the heart of it, but over the last couple have years cars have become vehicles for social media as never before, with the result that it doesn’t take much to propel the crew’s automotive pyrotechnics into the realm of global surveillance, as they work with Black Ops leader Frank Petty (Kurt Russell) to recover a NSA-esque metadata processor in order to bring assassin Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) to ground. Never before have the cars of the franchise been so plugged into global surveillance systems, perhaps explaining why the action is so aerial, as we move from a first act in which the crew parachute their vehicles into the Caucasus, to a second act in which they building hop across the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, to a showdown in Los Angeles in which they’re forced to both track and elude a series of helicopters and drones across and above the downtown cityscape. In the process, that creates a fantastic globetrotting vibe, but it also clarifies how much Los Angeles is these characters' natural home, even or especially as it gathers more and more of a multicultural flavour from everywhere else the crew visit in the interim. Some fifteen years after it started, the series still has the same taste for California as a Hispanic state, an extension or enclave of Mexico, and it feels right that this film in particular should end on that note, laying Brian O'Connor to rest where the crew first got to know and love him.