Even before the shocking news of Paul Walker’s death Saturday, Nov. 30, one of the most intriguing bonus features on Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s Bu-ray Disc of “Fast & Furious 6” ($34.98 on Dec. 10) was the “First Look” at “Fast & Furious 7,” due out summer 2014. 
With Walker’s death, the 2-minute sequence becomes a slightly eerie irony as it takes place in a graveyard at a funeral service where Walker is mourning the loss of his driving buddy Han (Sung Kang). It’s unclear how much of “7” was filmed before Walker died or how big of a role Walker was to have in “7” and how the studio will deal with Walker’s death in regards to the future of the franchise. (Joining the cast of “7” are Jason Statham and Kurt Russell.) The second most interesting bonus feature on the Blu-ray of “6” is “Take Control,” which also takes on a sadly prophetic tone as Walker describes the “mindless” risk-taking racing his character Brian does in a car in the opening sequence of the movie along with his movie driving buddy Dominic (Vin Diesel) on narrow winding roads in the hills of Spain. Apparently it was a similar afternoon of risky driving in real life with his race driver friend that resulted in the 40-year-old Walker’s real-life death. “Fast and Furious 6” is not one of the best films in the series but it nonetheless delivers enough action (actually too many over-the-top stunts) and interaction between all the characters from the various films in the series to make it enjoyable enough. The inclusion of the “First Look” at “Fast & Furious 7” seems like a bit of a spoiler for anyone who watches that before the “6” movie itself – Han is killed in what may seem to all but hardcore fans of the series as an arbitrary death scene stuck in the middle of the closing credits (for those who happen to still be watching that far into the credits). It will then take some Internet research, or a conversation with a Furious fan-boy, to realize that the death sequence in downtown Tokyo by the dangerously drifting Han is a replay of the final scene in the third film in the franchise, “Tokyo Drift.” Director Justin Lin, who has directed the four films since “Tokyo Drift,” clarifies (or further confuses) all this in his audio commentary and “Take Control” where he emphasizes more than once that this “6” movie was intended to be titled “Furious 6” before the studio marketing people insisted on giving it the full familiar moniker of “Fast and Furious 6” (“Furious 6” is the actual title in the opening titles of the movie itself). Lin explains that his intent after “Tokyo Drift” was to create trilogy of films with a storyline that were all to take place prior to the setting of “Tokyo Drift” but after the second movie in the series “2 Fast 2 Furious.” The last three Lin films were to be dubbed “Fast and Furious,” “Fast 5,” and “Furious 6.” Thus, the replay of the death of Han at the end of “6,” which here has the added twist of showing that the Mercedes that broadsided Han’s car was not an accident after all, as it appeared in “Tokyo Drift,” but as we are now shown, an intentional act by a man only mentioned by the ruthless “Shaw” villain in “6” (Luke Evans), who dies in this movie. Shaw refers to his brother, whom we are now led to believe is the man who T-bones Han’s car in Tokyo, and whom is shown to be the popular actor Jason Statham. Got it? So, if you know all of that, it makes perfect sense that the “Fast & Furious 7 First Look” features the team of crime-fighting driving buddies at the funeral of Han, with a menacing car prowling in the background and Walker promising the death of the man who killed Han, presumably Shaw’s brother. Unraveling this maze of unnecessarily complicated and out-of-sequence storylines and character introductions and departures is slightly more interesting than the movie itself, which Lin seems to take way too seriously for a seemingly simple franchise of machismo and machines. But maybe it is that sort of passion that revived the franchise with the fourth installment to become the huge international success that it is. At the core of the franchise is the unity of the family of drivers who come out of their lush and lavish retirements in exile to head to London to rescue Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), the former presumed dead girlfriend of Dom (yet another revision of history from previous films). In that environment, it is also extra poignant to watch Walker’s Brian character enjoying a new domestic life as the father of a baby girl while knowing that in real life his death yesterday left his own daughter fatherless. For the hardcore Furious fans, there are plenty of additional bonus featurettes exploring the making of all the preposterous stunts, chases and classic and custom cars and tanks. And Lin offers a lot of anecdotes in his audio commentary, included only on the “Extended Version” of the film, which is only a minute longer than the theatrical cut but also includes more brutal-sounding audio during the Brian’s (Walker’s) fight in a jail cell. — By Scott Hettrick
