By Teri Bayus

The Fast and Furious franchise has raced into theaters once again and I was glad. These films are my guilty pleasure and I’ve loved every one. It is the seventh film in this massive franchise that only gets better with each new segment.
In the fifth and sixth installments, Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker), Tej (Ludacirs), and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) had finally found financial stability and cleared their names to return home.
The character of Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) helped reinvigorate the franchise and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) was brought back from the dead. Mia (Jordan Brewster) and Brian were enjoying their newfound family life, but as we found out at the end of the sixth film, the evil Deckard (Jason Statham) is set on avenging his brother’s death.
Their seemingly peaceful life is interrupted as the team begins to be hunted down by this dangerous British criminal. Enter a secret government official known as Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) offering them a deal to take down Deckard.
There’s a Somali mercenary (Djimon Hounsou), Ramsey, a hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel), and a bunch of material filling in for some fantastic action and driving sequences. The adventure travels across the globe with flying cars, droids exploding in the Middle East, the elegant buildings in Abu Dhabi, and the City of Los Angeles.
I absolutely recommend you watch this film. Yes, its cheesy, but the film knows it. The action set pieces are properly shot with little quick cuts and do not induce headaches. The humor in these films is a lot more organic and not at the expense of stupid racist gags. The female leads while attractive, are not sexually objectified.
Diesel and Walker are the perfect compliments to each other, the classic muscle head and the tech-savvy friend, both striving together to find common ground. Then when you begin to build in their supporting cast, you can’t doubt the prowess of the writers. The dysfunctional nature of the first few movies turned into an incredibly complex story line, filled with plot holes that continued to be filled as the movies continued.
James Wan directed this Fast and Furious film. Wan is well known in the horror genre for directing classics likes Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring. Even though doing an action movie on this scale is far away from where he normally directs, Wan does a great job. I found my self saying, “Holy smokes!” more than once. This film has more action scenes than probably any other film in the franchise.
After the tragic death of Paul Walker before the film completed filming, production was shut down and the film was reworked in order to deal with this lose. The film deals with his death perfectly, not killing him off, and giving him one heck of tribute.
Body doubles, stunt doubles, and CGI were used to complete the film following Walker’s death. His brothers, Caleb Walker and Cody Walker, were among the stunt doubles, and also provided voice over. This is a popcorn movie at its best.

Teri Bayus can be reached at: or follow my writing and ramblings at: www.teribayus.com. Bayus also hosts Taste Buds, a moving picture rendition of her reviews shown on Charter Ch. 10. Dinner and a Movie is a regular feature of Tolosa Press.