Furious 7

Dustin: 3.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: Furious 7 is the seventh movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise, just in case you weren’t sure which series this belonged to from the title. It stars Vin Diesel as himself, the Rock as a DSS agent and Paul Walker as a superhero who can deflect bullets and change the length of his hair in every scene.

Nick: ...and they all have the uncanny ability to arrive right when they are needed. And jump from car to car. And Vin Diesel did the most amazing thing I never thought I’d see anyone do in this series: stop at a stop sign.

Dustin: It was all so goofy I was able to forgive a lot. This is the first of these films I actually kind of enjoyed (I’ve only seen Tokyo Drift--hated it!--and Fast & Furious 6--so-so). This film is a bunch of action set pieces sandwiched between scenes that look like they were pulled from a rap video. It’s a lot of fun and feels akin to action films from the ‘90s.

Nick: I’ve seen all of them and the ones I like are the two you’ve seen, the first and the new one.  Though 2 Fast 2 Furious is in my most hated films of all time list. No one is saying these films are anything but technically good and fun, but they do cater to their audience of 13-year-olds more than any series ever made. I believe every F&F has rapper cameos by whomever is popular at that time. We got Rita Ora last time and this time Iggy Azalea. I really can’t name one of their songs, but yet I know who they are… sad.

Dustin: I don’t know how this film gets away with so much stupidity and yet gets mostly positive reviews. I think the tone it establishes helps. There’s a scene where Paul Walker runs up the side of a bus as it’s going over a cliff and then leaps to safety. I thought of a scene in the last Hobbit movie where Legolas jumped across pieces of a bridge as they were falling and thought “Yeah, right,” even in a fantasy film. This scene in Furious 7 had me laughing and applauding its ridiculous premise.

Nick: I think the last two have been the most entertaining and that might be because they started to hire martial artists as bit-part actors and brought in Dwayne Johnson who is just phenomenal when playing it up on screen. The last one had Gina Carano and Furious 7 has another female MMA fighter, Ronda Rousey, and my favorite film martial artist, Tony Jaa. Though I wish they would have made Jaa a good guy and have him be their Groot. He only says two words in English throughout the whole film! But placing him as the bad guy and having Paul Walker fight him and get the best of him twice was the hardest part to believe throughout the whole series.

Dustin: The film was praised for it’s action cinematography, but I still had problems with how a lot of the fights were captured. Like a lot of movies these days, the fights look very choppy, and feel fake. A steadier hand would actually make these more exciting.

Nick: I don’t think that is necessarily the directing, but the editing. I often complain about that in American films when dealing with fighting. There is so much editing that everything feels faked. The only scenes that weren’t heavily edited were the shots of Jaa, whenever he was winning, and Rousey in the same scenario.

Dustin: At the beginning of the film, you jokingly asked, “Was this directed by Michael Bay?” because pretty much only attractive actors were cast in every roll. This film had other elements that seemed Bay-like: overactive camera and spinning shots of one of a stationary character. But Bay’s films are widely disparaged. They often feel mean-spirited and mindless. How is Furious 7 different?

Nick: The difference, at least in the attractive area, is that F&F7 only cast attractive females while all the men were either buff or jokesters, and all the scenes take place where you could understand there being only attractive women: the beach, a billionaire’s party, Japan (that’s for you). Now in Bay’s film every single goddamn person is gorgeous unless they are obviously there to be the joke, like John Turturro, Ken Jeong and Alan Tudyk, and that’s just in the last one. Also, my favorite part of the Transformers series is when Shia LaBeouf is giving a presentation at Harvard and literally every single student is freakishly attractive, men and women. It doesn’t help that Bay also shoots Victoria Secret commercials and casts models as his main characters.

Dustin: I think part of what makes this movie likeable is that it has a multi-ethnic cast of actors who seem to genuinely like each other team up to defeat evil. People involved seem to understand how silly it all is, but still take it all seriously from a technical point-of-view. How many movies have we seen where it truly seems like no one involved cared?

Nick: Have we reviewed an Adam Sandler film?

I would like to talk about my least favorite part of this film and that is the forced exposition, which is mostly at the beginning and the posturing that happens throughout. There’s so much pointless information being given from one character to another in this film it really drags in the first hour.   Mia (Jordana Brewster) is pregnant again, but she doesn’t tell Walker for (insert reason here), which changes three times during the film. Mia tells Dom (Diesel), but if she tells Walker he won’t go risk his life helping kill a special ops agent who has already killed one of their friends. But Mia also says she doesn’t want to force him into a life he hates. Mia is the perfect wife. She is always dressed in a sexy manner, for no reason, and always cares more about what her man wants instead of what’s best for their family.

Dustin: We both laughed at that, because the drama was so contrived.

Nick: There’s so much of that though. The female inspector who works under the Rock, who I don’t recall at all from the previous films, is given a scene where the Rock runs up to her and says, “Here’s your recommendation,” and you’re such a great agent and it is such a pointless back and forth that leads to absolutely nothing. And lets bring back Iggy Azalea! Her scene is after Letty comes back to Race Wars and wins, the camera randomly starts following this white chick, who we’ve never seen, as she walks up to Letty and congratulates her by saying, “Way to go, Ghost Girl!” With the exception of the farewell to Walker at the end, all the dramatic scenes felt so forced. I won’t type about the posturing because it almost happens every second of the goddamn film when there isn’t a car blowing up.

And I realized that we never even mentioned the bad guys (beyond Jaa).

In truth there is so much to laugh at and just sit back and enjoy that we should probably write a Fast and Furious 7 Part 2 Review: Defying Gravity! I’ve wanted this series to be called Defying Gravity since the fourth installment.

Pain & Gain

Dustin: 3.5/5 stars Nick: 2.5/5 stars Average: 3/5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Pain & Gain is a true crime action/comedy directed by Michael Bay, and starring Marky Mark and the Rock. What did you think of Pain & Gain, Nicky Nick?

Nick: Well, Dusty Dustin, I thought it had a lot of energy with its erratic camerawork, but that and the constant tonal shifts made P&G a hard film to sit through.

Dustin: I didn’t find the tonal shifts too jarring. But I did have a problem with the overall tone. This was a “true” story about a trio of bodybuilders in search of the “American Dream.” They start a scam and end up gruesomely killing their victims when their plans go awry. I wasn’t sure playing it for laughs was entirely appropriate. By the way, I prefer to go by my wrestling name, the Stone. But to be honest, next to the Rock, the Pebble would probably be a more appropriate stage name.

Nick: By tonal shifts, I meant most scenes felt uncomfortable for the actors and myself as none of us knew whether to laugh or cringe.

Dustin: Did you think this was a problem with the dialogue? I thought it was often quite clever. These criminals were borderline brain dead, which is what made me laugh so much. I think it would be hard to write these characters without coming off as comical.

Nick: I loved the dialogue. It made a character quite dumb, but not to the point Rob Downey, Jr., would say “full retard.”

Dustin: When Marky Mark’s character named Michael Corleone and Scarface as American heroes because they came from nothing and achieved the American dream, it wasn’t only funny, but effectively gave relevant insight into the mind of the character.

The movie had some good visual gags too. You see Marky Mark drive up in a nice car, wearing a collared shirt and a tie, then you see him get out of the car and he’s wearing jeans. Then as he walks away from the camera, you see they’re jean shorts, and you remember this was set in the ‘90s. There were many nice moments like that.

Nick: I personally didn’t like those moments because one imagines the writers smirking when writing things like that. To bring up visual gags, like when the text pops up, “This is still a true story... seriously,” that moment was completely inaccurate, and so was a lot of the film as I found out after I had seen it.

Dustin: To think you can’t trust Michael Bay after he brought us Pearl Harbor.

The movie had some subtler visual gags too. Like after Marky Mark and the Rock kidnapped the owner of a Schlotzsky’s Deli, then later let him take a sip from one of their Schlotzsky’s cups. I enjoyed the thought of them going back to the restaurant for lunch even after they kidnapped the owner, which showed how hapless they were as criminals and developed character a little more.

Nick: Or how Lugo (Marky Mark) decides it’s a good idea to then manage the Schlotzsky’s and to then move into the man’s house. Seems like an easy way to get caught if that person was still alive and very, very loud.

Dustin: That part probably could have been left on the cutting room floor without taking much from the story. Which leads me to the film’s length. I think we both thought the movie was about 20 minutes too long, even though the movie moved at a fast clip. What could have been cut without detracting from the story?

Nick: I thought that the film was 50 minutes too long in what it chose to show. But then after taking out that 50 minutes, I would then add another 20 minutes of just a little more character development of our main character instead of switching the narrative around between five or six. I certainly didn’t need to know Ed Harris’s inner dialogue.

Dustin: Or the European stripper’s. The movie also waited too long to establish the multi-character point-of-view. It was a bit odd to hear Ed Harris’s inner thoughts for the first time about 90 minutes in. They should have started with the multi-character POV from the start, or, better yet, just stick to Marky Mark.

Nick: I would have liked to just have the viewpoint of the three main characters, mostly focusing on Daniel Lugo, and with him being the only one with an inner dialogue.

Dustin: This movie was like the poor man’s In Cold Blood. Both are based on true stories. Both focused on criminals lacking a number of brain cells who target victims for their money. I realize I might be flagging myself as an idiot to some film lovers, but in some ways, I liked P&G better than In Cold Blood. Respond.

Nick: Well, I feel you’re justified in that you’re comparing the plot lines and how they are both based on true stories. P&G is certainly more entertaining, but in my opinion not as well worked as In Cold Blood. The movies I would compare P&G to from a cinematic standpoint is Run Lola Run and Bay’s The Rock.

Dustin: I agree In Cold Blood is better from a cinematic viewpoint, such as the famous scene where Robert Blake gazes out the window and the shadows from the rain splattering on the window make it look like he’s crying. That was a much subtler and effective visual than a drop of blood dripping in slow motion from a chainsaw, bouncing off a counter top and splattering on a cashier’s Home Depot apron in P&G. But In Cold Blood was also too preachy by asking us to sympathize with the criminals and making them out to be “victims of the death penalty.” I personally think the criminals were born manipulators and Truman Capote played right into their hands. Pain & Gain didn’t have any of that preachiness and was thoroughly entertaining. I don’t always mind “checking my brain at the door.”

Nick: Sorry to slightly disagree with your viewpoint on P&G. I felt some scenes were supposed to make you feel for the criminals. The murders were all depicted purely as accidents, with the exception of the attempted murder of Tony Shalhoub’s character (who was portrayed as an asshole who had it coming). In real life, the killings were not seen that way, but were glorified in the film so as to not make one completely hate the characters.

Dustin: I think that goes back to both of our feeling that playing this true story for laughs wasn’t totally appropriate or respectful to the victims. Maybe they should have changed all the characters’ names and just acted like it was an original story. If anyone pointed out the resemblance to the actual events, the writers could have said they were inspired by some real events.

Nick: Actually, all the names besides Lugo's, Doorbal's and Doyle's were changed, I believe.  

Dustin: I think we both had trouble with the camerawork.

Nick: Bay is just too excited when he has a camera in his hands. It’s always moving! The camera always felt to be moving ever so slightly, whether it was up or left, always, always moving! When that happens in a film I feel it’s as if the director doesn’t trust in the script enough so he makes up for it by doing more things with the “extension of his penis.”

Dustin: You’re right. I’ve never been a fan of the “shaky cam.” There is rarely an artistic reason for the shaky cam. The shots were also very short. Probably two seconds on average. All this movement gave me a mild migraine, which was my main complaint about the film and would prevent me from seeing it a second time. If I had to describe the visual style, I would call it “loud.” Would you recommend this film?

Nick: I’m on the fence. Yes, in terms of how entertaining it can be at moments, but the constant shift of focus, and the text put on screen throughout the movie about how this is still a true story (even though the actual events were very different) make me despise P&G in a way. Though I honestly have told everyone to see it just because I think it’s one of Bay’s best. Dwayne Johnson did a great job with the role and I thought Anthony Mackie’s character should have been more developed because he is a superb actor.

Dustin: I would recommend Pain & Gain solely on its comedic value, even if the tone made me uncomfortable.

Nick: So today we learned to avoid weight lifting as it will ultimately lead to stupidity, hookers, drugs and slaughtering people who don’t support Marky Mark’s “American Dream.”

Dustin: Word to your mother!