'Furious 7' Movie Review: Film's Opening Weekend Performance Beyond Expectations

"Furious 7," directed by James Wan, premiered last April 3 and made an outstanding $143.6 million at the box office during its opening weekend, making it the ninth biggest U.S. opening weekend of all time. It also made $384 million during its first weekend at the box office worldwide.

In 2013, production on the film was halted due to the untimely death of franchise star Paul Walker following a high-speed car crash on Nov. 13. This delayed the film's original July 2014 release and presented a dilemma to the producers on how to work around the tragedy to be able to finish the movie.

The film became a tribute to the late Walker who co-starred with Vin Diesel beginning in the first movie of the franchise, "The Fast and the Furious," in 2001.

Of the top 10 movies with the biggest U.S. opening weekends of all time, "Furious 7" is the only one not based off a comic book or a young adult novel. Below is the list by ranking and box office grosses in millions:

Marvel's The Avengers – $207.4

Iron Man 3 – $174.1

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – $169.2

The Dark Knight Rises – $160.9

The Dark Knight – $158.4

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – $158.1

The Hunger Games – $152.5

Spider-Man 3 – $151.1

Furious 7 – $143.6

The Twilight Saga: The New Moon – $142.8

"Furious 7" earned more than all the other six movies in the franchise. Four of the seven movies in the franchise made it to the top 10 biggest U.S. opening weekends for Universal Pictures.

"Furious 7" is certainly bigger and bolder than the previous movies—which in itself is quite amazing considering the stunts pulled in the past movies. First-time Furious director James Wan tried to keep track of the wild and wacky antics done by Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), Letty Ortiz-Toretto (Michelle Rodriguez), Brian O'Conner (Walker) and the rest of the team, and it was very tricky, considering as well that the seven movies were not shown in order of their supposed chronology in real time – 1-2-4-5-6-3-7.

"Furious 7" starts where the third movie, "Tokyo Drift," left off. Dom and team had managed to cripple Owen Shaw, the bad guy in "6," while his brother, Deckan (Jason Stratham) killed Han (Sung Kang), one of the team members, at the end of "Tokyo Drift." It seems everyone wanted to kill everyone.

The result was a bit chaotic, with minimal character development, and with most of the supporting roles just there for the sake of being there.

What redeems the film is the series of amazing action sequences which have been the hallmark of any "Fast and Furious" film in the past. One reviewer described the film as "blatantly fun and unabashedly sentimental."

In the film, Dom and his team reunite to work with a top-secret government arm to rescue a hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel) who has devised the ultimate anti-privacy program from a terrorist ring. The reason the team is helping the government is because they wanted to defeat Deckard Shaw.

"Furious 7," in its attempt to top the previous films, did not rely on the usual car chases and races. This time around, cars are free-falling from military-grade planes and landing on the Azerbaijan only to be attacked with bullets, explosives and what-have-you. It has multi-million-dollar vehicles jumping off one expensive building to another.

The movie features an extremely violent catfight between femme fatales in cocktail dresses. It has a lot of other non-value adding but definitely visually-stimulating and adrenaline-packed treats.

The film already has some of the toughest characters played by Diesel, Rodriguez and Dwayne Johnson (Luke Hobbs). Stratham, Ong-Bak's Tony Jaa and UFC's Ronda Rousey provide more challenges.

In spite of the high-octane action, the film stayed true to the franchise's core that was founded on intense familial loyalty with a tribute to a fallen member. While the touching ending might feel a bit out of place, and directed like a touching, albeit corny, traditional postcard commercial, it was sincere, and it was expected, considering the real-life drama the team underwent when Walker passed away.

During the Jimmy Kimmel show, Diesel stated that "Furious 7" is the beginning of a new trilogy, which means Furious 8 and 9 are definitely coming. "Furious 8" already has a setting: New York.