Paul Walker’s death two years ago put a major spotlight on this movie. Losing a major star and loved person mid-production was a huge loss. A year delay to rewrite the ending and finish filming, Furious 7 turned out to be one of the series stronger entries.

In Fast and Furious 6, Owen Shaw was the big bad of the film. He didn’t fare too well by the end of it. That brings to light his brother, Deckard, who vows to wipe out Dom’s entire team as revenge in Furious 7.

With that setup, they hit all the marks for this franchise. A ton of cars, racing, destruction, fights, shoot-outs, explosions and corny dialog for good measure. Everything about this series is over the top and the movie keeps things fun until the end.

With Walker’s death, they set up his departure as his retirement from the team, going full time family man with Dom’s sister, Mia. It’s sprinkled in a few times in the movie until the good guys win and it’s like this huge cloud moves over everything as all the actors (you can tell it’s not the characters) get super bummed. Various techniques were used to get Paul into the end, the most obvious being body doubles on the beach where they never show his face. But they do manage to send him off in a touching and dare I say, artistic way.

As a whole, I think 7 is better than the last movie (5 being my favorite). It’s still an absurd summer blockbuster movie, but it feels a bit more grounded than 6 (and I do mean a bit, they went all out to make new and interesting carnage). The ending does feel weird to me because real life stuck its ugly mug into an onscreen reality. Knowing why the ending is the way it is, I’m curious to hear what a person who has no idea what happened thinks about it. I’m not sure how much it skews my perspective, but it feels to me like the Furious 7 ends when Dom is taken out of the rubble of the last action set piece. Saying goodbye to Brian O’Conner is this surreal “don’t break the 4th wall” moment because it’s everyone saying goodbye to Paul Walker. Feels like getting to the end of a book, but the last chapter is from a different one. I’m not sure if there was any way around it though, it couldn’t be ignored as Walker practically was the Fast and the Furious.

I hope they take their time moving on from this bookend to creating the next one.