Category Archives: Thrillers

As “big, dumb movies” go, the last few “Fast and Furious” films are some of the best – they’re solidly character-driven, and generally pack an emotional heft beyond your average superhero flick. “Furious 7” is no exception: it’s a briskly paced, action-drenched adventure that hits a new high point for the franchise.

In a nutshell, the “Fast and Furious” series centers on Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), and their team of exceptionally capable drivers/hackers/mayhem specialists. While the first few installments focused on the world of underground street racing, more recent films have amped up the vehicular carnage and added in a global/geopolitical focus. This time around, Toretto and company are out for revenge against Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who murdered one of their number in the closing minutes of “Fast and Furious 6.” Cue a series of gigantic set pieces stretching from Azerbaijan to Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles. all jammed full of physics-defying stunts and envy-inspiring supercars. It all builds to a delightfully berserk climax involving Predator drones, Miniguns, parkour, hand-to-hand combat, and dozens of exploding vehicles, which caps off the series in fine fashion. Add in a top-tier soundtrack, solid direction from James Wan (“Insidious,” “Saw,” “The Conjuring”), and “Furious 7” promptly emerges as the best chapter of the saga. (It’s also worth mentioning that the last few “Fast and Furious” films have added Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – one of the most likable actors currently working – into the mix. He certainly steals the show here.)

The “Fast and Furious” franchise has always been a bit of an outlier, characterized by a traditionalist ethos in an era of morally murky cinema (a sincere respect for religious faith, for example, permeates the series). More specifically, “Furious 7” offers an interesting counterpoint to the recent spate of “geri-action” films, in which an aging Hollywood star (or several) delivers beatdowns to swarms of enemies half his age (e.g. “Taken,” “The Expendables,” “The Last Stand,” “The Gunman,” etc.). Here, growing older is linked to maturation, family, and responsibility – which, in turn, are not portrayed as chains to be overcome, but as joys to be celebrated. The franchise also offers an atypically robust example of deep male friendship (Dom and Brian), which goes well beyond a casual “buddy cop” dynamic and leads into a surprisingly emotional coda (Walker was killed in a car accident during filming; the movie is dedicated to him).

Furthermore, Dom’s crew is never portrayed as “anti-heroic” in the sense that they electively violate genuine moral norms at their leisure (breaking traffic laws, after all, is the quintessential example of malum prohibitum versus malum in se). Rather, these characters routinely make the “right choice” between multiple difficult options – a perspective hewing far closer to an Aristotelian understanding of “virtue ethics” than a Batman-esque deontological approach or a James Bond-style utilitarianism.

“Furious 7” will win no awards for its script, which reads like a computer-generated algorithm of action hero clichés (though it undoubtedly does have some fantastic one-liners). Additionally, the camera’s constant ogling of bikini-clad female extras feels gratingly sexist, though it bears mention that the film’s female leads are treated with surprising respect.

That said, “Furious 7” is still a cut above many of its competitors (I confess, I was more excited for this than for the forthcoming “Avengers” sequel). The automotive action scenes grow ever more eye-popping, the cast continues to turn in solid work (as stupid as the dialogue might be, it’s clear everyone is enjoying themselves immensely), and the series’ underlying themes continue to resonate on an unexpectedly deep level.

It may not win an Oscar (as promised by Vin Diesel), but it’ll certainly make a lot of money. And it deserves to.

VERDICT: 8.5/10
The Platonic form of the early-summer action blockbuster. Highly recommended.

Normalized Score: 6.9

It’s been awhile since anything really interesting and review-worthy has released (or it might be due to the fact that I’ve since moved to Connecticut and started law school). As a fan of Gillian Flynn’s psychologically turbulent thriller, I knew “Gone Girl” would be a must-see…and who better to direct than David Fincher, the grandmaster of contemporary noir cinema?

At first blush, “Gone Girl” is the story of struggling writer Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) abruptly disappears on the morning of their fifth anniversary. Raised as a child of privilege – and as the inspiration for “Amazing Amy,” a series of children’s books written by her parents – Amy has clearly grown apart from her husband, numbed by their drab suburban existence (at least, that’s how it is in Nick’s telling). Without revealing too much, the film unfolds in nonlinear fashion, deploying unreliable-narrator twists along the way. What emerges is a tangled web of half-truth, infidelity, alienation, and betrayal – one which rips away the veneer of contemporary civility to expose a viciously Nietzschean tension between husband and wife.

Fincher has clearly brought his A-game to this project – and it would be hard to imagine a better synthesis of director and subject matter. Backed by a buzzing, insidiously ambient electronic score (composed by longtime Fincher collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), Fincher conjures up a menace-drenched masterpiece. The sense of impending doom that suffuses his entire filmography is certainly present here, at once both repellent and hypnotic. Additionally, Affleck and Pike are perfect in their parts – one couldn’t ask for a better Nick/Amy. And perhaps most impressively of all, the black comedy of the original novel isn’t lost in the translation to screen. “Gone Girl” isn’t totally downbeat, despite its gothic subject matter.

At its misshapen heart, “Gone Girl” is a stark indictment of humans’ desire to remake one another to suit their idealized fantasies. Some commentators have treated it as an indictment of marriage itself, but this is too narrow a view: marriage is but one of the spheres which these broken protagonists decide to weaponize. Tensions between family and career, wealth and fulfillment, and masculine and feminine expectations are all factors bearing on the tragedy that unfolds onscreen. And what a tragedy it is – baroque in the best of ways, kept from melodrama by the steady hand of its director and cast.

“Gone Girl” is a dark, brutal, emotionally twisted drama that’s obviously not for all audiences (there’s sexual content and a memorably grisly scene of violence). It’s also a wrenching study of social power dynamics, and a brilliantly crafted piece of neo-noir that raises questions of identity, projection, and manipulation.

I can’t recall the last time I saw a movie where the audience was stunned into absolute silence as the lights came up. That pretty much says it all.

VERDICT: 9/10
A grim, but thoroughly compelling, mystery-thriller that ranks with Fincher’s best work.

Normalized Score: 7.9

(An important addendum: one of the film’s most trauma-inducing visuals is the sight of Neil Patrick Harris – the legendary Barney Stinson – wearing a blazer over a polo shirt. I was appalled.)