Furious 7 (2015): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

Furious 7 is about Dominic Toretto's crew being hunted by Deckard Shaw, played by Jason Statham, the older brother of Owen Shaw, the villain they beat in the previous film. In release order it comes directly after Fast & Furious 6 and before The Fate of the Furious, and in chronological order it sits seventh, right after Tokyo Drift.

Dom, Brian and the crew have returned to ordinary lives in the US after beating Owen Shaw. Dom is helping Letty Ortiz recover her memory, and Brian is getting used to being a father. Then Deckard swears revenge and starts hunting the crew, and a letter bomb from him wrecks the Toretto home.

In Furious 7, Dominic Toretto's crew hunts Deckard Shaw after he kills Han, and they trade a rescue mission for Ramsey's God's Eye program.

Dom brings Han's body home from Tokyo. At the funeral in Los Angeles he spots Deckard and chases him, but a covert team led by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) steps in and Deckard gets away. Mr. Nobody offers a deal: the crew rescues Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), a hacker who built a tracking program called God's Eye, and in return he will help them catch Deckard.

The crew drops their cars by parachute into the Caucasus Mountains in Azerbaijan, ambushes the convoy of the terrorist Mose Jakande and frees Ramsey. The hunt for the God's Eye chip then leads to Abu Dhabi, where they steal it from a luxury car held in a prince's tower. They use the program to find Deckard, but he has teamed up with Mose Jakande, who ambushes them and takes God's Eye.

Back in Los Angeles, Dom sets out to face Deckard while the others protect Ramsey from Mose Jakande's helicopter and drone. Hobbs leaves the hospital and takes out the drone with an ambulance, and Brian helps Ramsey shut God's Eye down. Dom and Deckard fight until Mose Jakande turns on both of them. Dom defeats Deckard, then crashes his car into the helicopter, and Hobbs finishes the job by shooting the grenades left aboard. Deckard ends up held in a secret prison, and Letty Ortiz tells Dom she has her memories back.

Furious 7 premiered on April 1, 2015, at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. The wide US release followed on April 3, 2015, with the UK on April 3 and Australia a day earlier on April 2.

Production had been put on hold after Paul Walker's death on November 30, 2013. Filming resumed on March 31, 2014, and wrapped on July 10, 2014, which left less than nine months between the end of filming and the April 2015 opening.

Brian leaves the crew at the end of Furious 7 because he has chosen family life over street racing, and the scene doubles as a farewell to Paul Walker.

The action closes first, and it closes in steps. Dom defeats Deckard, then crashes his car into Mose Jakande's helicopter, and Hobbs finishes the job by shooting the grenades left aboard. Jakande is killed. Brian has already helped Ramsey shut God's Eye down, so the tracking program is neutralized, and Deckard is captured and locked away in a secret prison. Letty Ortiz then tells Dom she has her memories back, which pays off the recovery Dom was helping her with in the opening act.

Only after that does the film slow down. Brian is shown settled into a quiet family life, with another baby on the way. In the final scene Dom drives and remembers his years with Brian, and the two part ways on the road.

The production context explains why the scene is built this way. Paul Walker died on November 30, 2013, production was put on hold on December 4, 2013, and it resumed on March 31, 2014 before ending on July 10, 2014, according to the film's Wikipedia entry. Walker's brothers Caleb and Cody stood in for him, and Weta Digital added his face in more than 350 shots. Those numbers show how much of Brian's screen time had to be assembled after the pause, so a farewell that asks for a drive and a parting of the ways, rather than another stunt, fits what the crew had to work with.

Compared with the rest of the series, the structure is unusual. Fast & Furious 6 ends with the crew beating Owen Shaw, and this film begins with those wins already behind them: Brian adjusting to fatherhood, Dom helping Letty. Han's death in Tokyo, which sits right after Tokyo Drift in chronological order, sets the revenge plot moving. The loudest set pieces come in the middle, including the cars dropped by parachute into the Caucasus Mountains and the theft of the God's Eye chip from a prince's tower in Abu Dhabi, and the last scene is the quietest in the film.

My opinion: that choice is the most deliberate piece of staging in the saga, because it trades one more stunt for a quiet shot of two cars heading in different directions. Inside the story a character leaves the crew, and outside it the film says goodbye to Paul Walker. The film that follows is The Fate of the Furious. Newcomers can use the Fast and Furious movies in order guide to see where to start, so this ending lands with the full history behind it.

Furious 7 was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, Colorado, Abu Dhabi, Los Angeles and Tokyo, with the airdrop sequence shot over the Arizona desert. Principal photography began in September 2013 in Atlanta.

• Atlanta, Georgia: principal photography, including Han's funeral at Oakland Cemetery and a parking garage scene.
• Colorado: the mountain driving and chase sequences on Pikes Peak Highway and Monarch Pass.
• Abu Dhabi, UAE: Etihad Towers and city sequences.
• Los Angeles, California.
• Tokyo, Japan.
• Arizona desert: the airdrop sequence.

The choices were partly financial. Abu Dhabi was picked over Dubai because of its 30% filming rebate, and the studio first wanted to shoot the Colorado scenes in Georgia for tax breaks.

Furious 7 used 340 cars, destroyed more than 230 of them, and relied on only about 10% computer generated action.

• Paul Walker died on November 30, 2013, and production was put on hold on December 4, 2013, then resumed on March 31, 2014 and ended July 10, 2014.
• Walker's brothers Caleb and Cody stood in for him, and Weta Digital added his face in more than 350 shots.
• The airdrop sequence used a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, with cars dropped from 12,000 feet over the Arizona desert.
• The Lykan HyperSport destroyed on screen was a cheaper replica, not one of the seven production cars.

For the vehicles across the whole saga, see Fast and Furious cars.