Review: 'Furious 7'

[vc_row][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text disable_pattern="true" align="left" margin_bottom="0"]Rising like a phoenix from the depths of early 2000s schlock, the Fast and the Furious franchise is quickly becoming an American cornerstone. Jam-packed with butts in skimpy bikinis, shiny cars and mumbled proclamations of brotherhood and friendship, you'd think it would be an oft-mocked disaster, polarizing at best, slaughtered on the vine by our itchy-trigger-finger social media generation. But Furious 7, released last week to raucous applause, has already grossed $384 million worldwide and garnered an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Its predecessors, Fast Five and Furious 6, were equally beloved. Together they've rejuvenated the careers of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, turned Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson into a legitimate cinematic superstar and – through retconning and some genuinely ingenious plotting – transformed a mishmash of loosely structured car movies into a series with distinct throughlines, logical continuity and genuine character development. That's not to say Furious 7, and the movies that spawned it, are very good. To inspect them in great detail may cause your head to explode. But for what they do, and the world they inhabit, they dwell in the upper echelon. At its core, Furious 7 is a testament to the spoils that accompany shrewd, organized filmmaking and character consistency. Plus some cool explosions. [/vc_column][vc_column width="1/3"]