Fast & Furious 7: Women Or Cars Or...

A while ago, in an unscientific social media poll, I asked Telegraph readers what they enjoyed most about the series; one of the most popular answers was its gay subtext.

“The Rock and Vin Diesel, and the chance they might start rolling around in engine oil and kissing” was a typically vivid response, and while there’s nothing in the Fast & Furious films to quite match that image, yet, it’s currently rare for a mainstream studio picture to openly explore the possibility that its heroes could be bisexual. At one point in the fourth film, a typically pneumatic female asks Toretto if he prefers women or cars. “I appreciate a fine body regardless of the make,” he shoots back.

In the fifth, Diesel and Johnson mount one another in a ludicrous tussle in a shed; in the sixth, Michelle Rodriguez and Gina Carano, the strapping female mixed martial artist, clash on the London Underground in a brawl that’s basically frottage. The seventh will add a poignant note to this: as the last film completed by Paul Walker before his death in November last year, the relationship between O’Conner and Toretto – the interracial bromance that started the ball rolling in 2001 – will necessarily come to an end.

It all makes you wish the films themselves were better, although if they’re doing the heavy lifting, perhaps that’s enough.

Telegraph.