Fast and Furious 7

image for Fast and Furious 7

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Not recommended under 14; parental guidance to 14 (violence and coarse language)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Fast and Furious 7
  • a review of Fast and Furious 7 completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 7 April 2015.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 15 Not recommended due to violence and coarse language.
Children aged 14 Parental guidance recommended due to violence and coarse language.
Children aged 15 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Fast and Furious 7
Classification: M
Consumer advice lines: Action violence
Length: 137 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

In Fast & Furious 6 Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his gang put a stop to Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), crippling Shaw and putting him in hospital. Now Owen’s big brother, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) is bent on revenge. Deckard has already killed Han (Sung Kang) a member of Dom’s team from previous Fast & Furious films and is out to slaughter Dom and his team along with agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).      

Meanwhile, Dom’s right hand man Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) is adjusting to life as a new father and husband to Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). When a package from Tokyo arrives on Brian’s doorstep and explodes, destroying the family home and nearly killing Brian, Mia, their baby son, and Dom, the team decide their only option is to revert back to their old ways and hunt down and destroy Deckard before he destroys them.

It is at this point in the film that a shadow agent by the name of Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) arrives on the scene making Dom an offer he can’t refuse. Dom must rescue a computer hacking program called God’s Eye and the person who designed it, a hacker named Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), from a Somalian terrorist named Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou). The program has the ability to locate anyone on the planet within moments, regardless of where they are hiding. In return Mr. Nobody will give Dome free access to God’s Eye and all the resources Dom needs to locate and defeat Deckard Shaw.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Terrorism; computer hacking; family and friendship; mercenaries; revenge

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

The film contains sequences of intense action violence throughout including brutal physical violence enacted by both men and women, battle scenes, and reckless vehicle-related violence. There is a high body count but minimal blood and gore. Examples include:

  • In the film’s opening scene we find a man standing next to a hospital bed where an unconscious man lies. He is surrounded by a scene of destruction, with numerous dead or unconscious soldiers scattered across the floor and medical staff cowering in a corner. The man threatens that he will kill everyone in the hospital if they don’t take care of the unconscious man in the bed. As he leaves the hospital, a soldier approaches the man who hands the soldier a grenade and pushes him away.  The grenade explodes several seconds later, killing the soldier.
  • In a fight between two groups of soldiers, numerous soldiers are shot dead; we see one soldier shot dead lying on the ground with his eyes open. There are numerous explosions with soldiers being thrown through the air.  One man is shot several times in the chest and we see a small bloody bullet wound in his chest and a blood soaked patch in the side of his shirt.
  • There are brutal fist fights throughout the film.
  • One scene depicts a fight between two women wearing evening gowns during which we see numerous kicks and punches to the face and body, head butts, vases  smashed over heads, faces smashed into tables and walls, arms slashed with knives, and one woman thrown over a balcony and crashing onto a glass table.
  • A box left on a suburban doorstep explodes in a gigantic fireball that completely demolishes the house. The force of the explosion throws a man and woman through the air and another man against a car which contains a young baby. All are uninjured but we hear that the bomb was an attempt to kill an entire family.
  • The film contains a number of frenetic scenes of vehicle pursuits. These involve cars and larger vehicles being rammed, busting into flames or plunging off mountain roads, use of automatic weapons, people being thrown out of speeding vehicles, chases by planes and helicopters.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

Children in this age group will be disturbed by the violent scenes described above

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Children in this age group are also likely to be disturbed by some of the violent scenes described above

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group are also likely to be disturbed by some of the violent scenes described above

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Younger children in this age group may also be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes of violence

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

  • branded beer
  • many car brands

Sexual references

The film contains some overt sexual references and innuendo. Examples include:

  • “He’d wished his momma had kept her legs closed”.
  • In relation to engaging in sexual activity, a man is told “The only thing you took down was "no knees Denise" at the Senior Prom”.
  • In relation to a woman a man says, “With a body like that I ain’t gunna pack it behind a computer”.
  • A man makes reference to his balls.
  • Two men argue over which one had the right to date a woman with one saying that he had “dibs” on her. One of the men refers to himself as “man candy”.
  • A man makes reference to a woman having “missiles” behind her dress - referring to her breasts.   

Nudity and sexual activity

The film contains some partial nudity and sexual activity. Examples include:

  • A scene at a racetrack depicts a number of women wearing brief bikinis. The women (some soaking wet) dance and wriggle their buttocks against each other.
  • There are a number of other scenes of women wearing brief bikini-style outfits
  • Several men are depicted with bare chests.
  • A man and woman kiss passionately, but briefly in a couple of scenes.

Use of substances

  • A man tells a young girl “Your dad’s on heavy pain meds”. Later in the film than same man swallows several tablets before he leaves his hospital room.
  • Beer drinking in a number of situations
  • Champagne and brightly coloured cocktails are being drunk at a party.  

Coarse language

There are coarse language and occasional name calling throughout the film. Examples include:

  • bastard ; bollocks; damn and goddamn used multiple times; arse; bitch; screwed up; shit  
  • the word “fucking” is heard in a song during the end credits.

In a nutshell

The seventh film in the Fast and Furious series is a crime action thriller featuring the usual fast cars, and targeted at older adolescent males and adult fans of the series. This film seems to contains even more over-the-top action violence, reckless endangerment and fight scenes than previous films in the series and is definitely not recommended for under 15s.

The main messages from this movie are:

  • Family is the most important thing in life.
  • Parenting and being a good partner are more rewarding and fulfilling than fast paced action and thrills.


Parents may also wish to discuss how the film blatantly objectifies women as sexual objects.