Fast & Furi­ous 7

Much like Andrei Rublev, Andrei Takovsky’s tran­scen­dent spir­i­tu­al epic from 1966, James Wan’s Fast & Furi­ous 7 posts mankind on an inte­ri­or quest for God, or at least an idle skir­mish to feel the warm breath of some vari­ety of divine enti­ty. On this occa­sion, Man locates God, bumps chests, swings an indus­tri­al span­ner in His gen­er­al direc­tion, and then enters into a game of mus­cle car chick­en. Both par­ties walk away from the ensu­ing wreck­age dazed and bat­tered, but with no clear vic­tor between them.

It may seem glib to be dis­cussing the sub­lime indif­fer­ence of some kind of all-see­ing deity in the light of the untime­ly death of one of the F&F franchise’s ban­ner stars – Paul Walk­er – but the film does pit itself as being about how God is a force that can be appro­pri­at­ed for good and for evil, exert­ing His will in ways which defy both the laws of physics and west­ern log­ic in its totality.

Yet in this film, God is fal­li­ble, and this deduc­tion serves to lend an immense pow­er to a cli­mac­tic coda in which Walker’s Bri­an O’Conner decides to take a leap into the void. Or, in this case, a sun­ny moun­tain sliproad to Arca­dia. Fade to white. The leg­end, ​“For Paul”.

This may all read like high­fa­lutin, mild­ly sac­ri­le­gious wib­ble, but it’s not. God does make an appear­ance in this film in a very lit­er­al sense, as a piece of com­put­er spy­ing soft­ware which allows ​“the right peo­ple” to turn lengthy man­hunts into a mere for­mal­i­ty. Via the secret (we pre­sume) col­lu­sion between glob­al busi­ness inter­ests, every phone becomes a GPS bea­con, every secu­ri­ty cam­era a win­dow onto oth­er­wise pro­tect­ed pri­va­cy. It’s a tool by which name­less, back-room keep­ers of the peace (Kurt Rus­sell) can track and trace to their heart’s con­tent. It’s instan­ta­neous, too, so no sit­ting around while the lab boys synch up satel­lite images or run numbers.

This soft­ware is called God’s Eye, and it places human beings into a posi­tion of all-see­ing omnipo­tence. The film equates civ­il lib­er­ties and dig­i­tal pri­va­cy with a high­er pow­er, sug­gest­ing that by not will­ing­ly relin­quish­ing per­son­al data for use by cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments, we are in fact defam­ing the almighty in all his spec­tac­u­lar glo­ry. The film refus­es to have one of its char­ac­ters speak up about the essen­tial injus­tice of such a scheme and how it could eas­i­ly be used for nefar­i­ous gains, like stealth mar­ket­ing. Even Russell’s shady oper­a­tive turns out as a straight-shoot­ing good ol’ boy who would not even think that this soft­ware would be used for any­thing oth­er than track­ing down the Osama Bin Ladens of this world.

Dominic Toret­to (Vin Diesel) wants hold of this funky gad­get in order to track down mad­balls lone-gun­ner, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), whose very name evokes the inher­ent frailty of the human body and the melan­choly, rain-lashed night­mare of exis­tence. If Shaw him­self isn’t God, then he may be the Dev­il, a con­stant and irk­some pres­ence in the team’s gym­nas­tic vehic­u­lar sor­ties. Toret­to wants to be able to find Shaw and take him down, but only on his own terms.

The char­ac­ters of Fast & Furi­ous 7 exist in a state of post-eco­nom­ic con­tent­ment, dri­ven by a lust which can’t be quan­ti­fied, where mon­ey nev­er fac­tors in to what they can do, how they can defend them­selves, what they can dri­ve and who they con­sort with. New sports cars appear at each glob­al port of call, one for each mem­ber. The thrill of fly­ing bul­lets fired from the mod­i­fied lug­gage com­part­ment of a tooled up vari­ety coach dri­ving at high speeds is a high octane form of plea­sure which can­not be slapped with a finite price. In the end, there are no phys­i­cal spoils, just hon­our, fam­i­ly, and all the high-end kit which seems to be passed on to them gratis between scenes.

These peo­ple are gold­en gods who walk between the rain­drops of death. They are Bib­li­cal titans who stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back and ran off whim­per­ing like a school­boy with a gam­my leg. Movies don’t have to exist in the real world. That’s what makes the movies. This feisty street rac­ing make-weight turned carpark lev­el­ling jug­ger­naut has grad­u­al­ly tak­en all leave of ratio­nal real­i­ty, to the point where in this sev­enth instal­ment, the action may as well be tak­ing place in some kind of YA dystopia where clocks run on hon­ey or teenagers have devel­oped a way of pro­cre­at­ing through touch­ing wrists.

Some may ques­tion whether there are taste issues relat­ing to the use of Paul Walker’s image in a gigan­tic, cor­po­rate mon­ey-mak­ing enter­prise. But movies pos­sess the pow­er of res­ur­rec­tion, an embalmed mem­o­ry for all time. He may not be with us now, but on screen, Walk­er doesn’t just exist — he lives. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing and bit­ter­ly iron­ic that his swan­song is a film which cel­e­brates the aston­ish­ing dura­bil­i­ty of man to the point that death becomes an unthink­able annoyance.