Furious 7

Does the end justify the means? This final installment in “The Fast and Furious” franchise never mentions the phrase “end-justifies-the-means,” however, that is the basis that drives it. There are no good guys in this movie. There are just bad guys and really bad guys. The really bad guys lose in the end.

The Toretto Crew, who killed the villain Owen Shaw, is targeted for revenge by Owen’s brother Deckard (Jason Statham). A covert operations team helps the Toretto Crew defeat Deckard, in exchange for their help protecting a special computer software from people who want to steal it. Insert approximately an hour total of action here. Deckard goes to jail and the men of the Toretto Crew settle down with their families.

The language is milder compared to what you might expect. Some men briefly drink and talk about beer, but—contrary to what you might expect from a car action movie—no one gets drunk. The sexual content is rare, but when it does appear, it’s in your face. Bare hinies are shown clearly in the background from women who are wearing thongs. At a party scene in Egypt, women have painted their skin gold, and the thongs are the same color as the gold paint.

The violence is not gory. The only blood shown is a brief scene of a bullet wound being treated; this scene is after the violence. Even the body count is low. This is because the violence deals primarily with cars. We see cars wrecked, blown up, flipped over, driven off cliffs—and that just scratches the surface—with people in them, but we don’t really see the people themselves when they die. The shooting scenes are a little more violent, but even those are relatively mild. The mayhem is almost comic, because it’s obviously exaggerated to wild craze for thrills.

The Fast and Furious franchise is all about street racing. Both the protagonists and antagonists drive like complete and total maniacs on public roads—in many cases, even through big cities, putting the lives of outsiders in danger. In addition to being offensively foolish, this is illegal. The protagonists aren’t just fleeing from pursuers, either. They’re voluntarily and enthusiastically fighting on the roads. And all this is in attempt to do justice and achieve righteous goals. While they’re trying to make sure justice is carried out, they don’t care if they commit other, and sometimes even more destructive, injustices in the process! There is even a game of chicken. Here’s something to think about: is sinning in order to do justice worse than sinning for an unjust purpose? The latter is just rebellion (not to reduce how wrong it is), but the former is hypocrisy.

I’ll readily admit that the action by itself is fun and exciting. I mean, it’s exciting to watch a car crash through a window from the top story of one sky scraper, and crash through a lower window of the neighboring skyscraper, zooming through the buildings. That’s just exciting—a spectacle. The production quality is fantastic, too. But the wickedness of all this, and the hypocrisy on top of it, made me very impatient for the movie to be over. I couldn’t sympathize with the protagonists; therefore the action was just tiring and exhausting. When the wheels stopped spinning, I was glad to be over with it.

There are some positive messages about families and the value of teamwork, love, and being present for family members. But this is just a side topic, and are plenty of other movies that teach this, and much better too (Matthew 5:46). For that matter, there are plenty of other movies with exciting action. So you’re not really missing out on anything by detouring around this movie.

The special computer software previously mentioned is called “god’s eye.” It allows the covert operations team to keep a very close watch over the city. But as the real eye of God was watching all this, was He pleased with it? [2 Chronicles 16:9] Will He be disappointed if His people watch this movie? Oh, the action is enjoyable, but almost no movie is without messages—and the “moral” of this story is problematic; the ends do NOT justify the means. The Toretto Team attempted to get to a good destination, but they took all the wrong roads. Don’t follow in their tracks.

My advice: Steer clear of this movie.

Violence: Heavy to extreme / Profanity: Moderate—OMG (1), G*d-d*mn (5), “Oh G*d no” (1), hell (11), d*mn (4), SOB (1), s-words (14), *ss (10), bollocks (1), partial f-word (1) / Sex/Nudity: Heavy

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.