Fast and Furious 7

The recent departure of Jeremy Clarkson from one of the BBC's most popular – and lucrative – programmes has hit headlines around the world. A show famous (or infamous) for its edgy humour and wild antics, Top Gear capitalises on the love that many have for fast cars and ludicrous stunts. When placed alongside any of the films from the Fast and Furious franchise, however, the high jinx of Top Gear suddenly seems rather placid and conservative. Fast and Furious 7 has sped into cinemas with an almighty roar and makes the car-based antics of the Top Gear boys look like they've been thought up by a committee from the Women's Institute.

You might say that seven Fast and Furious films is rather pushing it, and you'd be right. The franchise can hardly be praised for its complex characterisation, beautifully-balanced dialogue or cutting examination of humanity in the 21^st century. Indeed, the series is film-making by numbers and the audience is battered into submission by the number of fast cars, scantily-clad women, explosions and physics-defying action sequences. And this is all before the opening titles.

Fast and Furious 7 reunites its star-filled cast against bad-guy Jason Statham who is seeking revenge on Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family for putting his brother in hospital in the previous film. Add to this the hunt for a piece of hacking technology which can turn any electronic device in the world into a spy camera, and you've got the bare bones of a plot which is as about as convincing as a UKIP manifesto.

If you put the plot to one side, you're left with a number of action sequences which seem to get more and more ludicrous as the film goes on. Reality doesn't feature in director James Wan's vocabulary, but the film, I have to say, is all the better for it as supercars fall out from the back of the cargo plane and plummet down to the mountains of Azerbaijan. This gut-wrenching free-fall, followed by an intense car chase through the mountain roads is a well-shot and frenetically-edited affair and has a sense of fun which Wan seems to capitalise on when the action moves to the deserts of Abu Dhabi.

The reasons for the cast's decampment to one of the world's richest cites are easy to explain: cars, money and more cars. Toretto and his team have to steal the hacking software which has been hidden, rather bizarrely, in a supercar belonging to an Arab billionaire. But, of course, said car is located at the top of Abu Dhabi's Etihad Towers and the only way that Toretto and friend Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) can think of escaping with it, is to drive it out of the skyscraper's window and into the neighbouring tower. The resulting shots of a multi-million pound car in mid-air between two skyscrapers is ridiculous, but all the more fun for it. Less visually-arresting is the film's denouement, set on the mean streets of LA which sees fights between cars and helicopters, and between Statham and Diesel in a multi-story car park (to be fair, it's better than it sounds on paper).

Fast and Furious 7 was always going to tear up the tarmac at the box office. But the untimely death of one of its stars, Paul Walker, in an unrelated car crash midway through filming, assured that it would become a very special film for the fans. Despite concerns that filming would have to be abandoned following Walker's death, some clever computer graphics and the help of Walker's brothers as body doubles meant that the film could be completed and adapted to be a fitting tribute to the star. Walker's loss is sensitively acknowledged at the end of the film and, as the screen fades to white, I'm sure some of the series' most devoted fans will be wiping away a tear or two. And that's something I never thought I'd say about a Fast and Furious film.

But here's the thing. One doesn't go to see a Fast and Furious movie for high-art, just as one wouldn't pick up a copy of the Daily Mail in search of balanced and considered journalism. But James Wan has directed a film which is brash and unapologetic and which will satisfy the wants of fans of fast cars, explosions and death-defying stunts. The departure of Paul Walker, however, served to underline the fact that even in Hollywood, no-one is immortal. 

Clapperboard Rating: * * *