F & F 7

Yep, I did see it, and was irritated by my fellow patrons, so... yay?

So the Dom family must now fight Deckard Shaw... in the most roundabout way ever. In order to fight Shaw, first they must get the key and then the lock and then the box and then... this is a Fetch Quest of a movie! The whole Shaw line becomes the B plot, and although he constantly comes up, it's more like 'hey, I'm in this too' rather than providing the main impetus for moving the plot forward. However, because we get the excuse to go all over the place for the Fetch Quest, we get the excuse to have all sorts of set pieces all over the place. Which doesn't help make the movie feel connected.

And then there's Paul. This is his retirement, and there were some scenes that were about Brian more than were with Brian. I thought it largely worked well, and in the action sequences, I couldn't spot anything untoward. Still, at the end, there is, as the kids say, the 'feels'.

With all these characters, it's hard to get proper screen time, and we are flicking around a lot of locations and actors. Yes, Lucas Black is in this (as Sean, not, as I kept spelling it, Shaun), but briefly, and we finally put Tokyo Drift into the chronology properly, and there's Letty's sub-plot, and the Brian/Mia sub-plot and... and yet, it's over two hours, and feels like there are actual action scenes that could be removed to make it more streamlined.

I understand there's already mention of an 8, but the series could easily have stopped here. And maybe with Paul Walker's ending, they will cap it... or the studio could continue to demand it gets made for money.

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