Law of diminishing returns be damned, the accidental franchise that began with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious not only keeps chugging along well past other repeat players’ sell-by dates, but somehow grows even more successful. Now we’re up to Furious 7. Seven!

In terms of sequentially numbered series — no reboots, no remakes — such longevity and mobility are unheard of. For sake of perspective, other chapter sevens have found Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees facing New Blood in the form of a telekinetic teenager, and the Police Academy gang on a rather говенный Mission to Moscow. Respect, Furious 7, respect.

After the one-two horror punch of Insidious and The Conjuring, director James Wan trades poltergeists for pistons to take over the driver’s seat from Justin Lin, helmer of the past four adventures, from 2006’s underrated Tokyo Drift to 2013’s Fast & Furious 6. The change is imperceptible, because Wan keeps the camera at ass-cheek level around the gyrating bikini models and follows the Mad Libs plot structure: Reformed ex-con Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel, Riddick) is called upon to reassemble his team of gearheads for one last time — again!

For this go-round, the whole frickin’ world is at stake, with terrorists itching to wrest control of a global-surveillance system by kidnapping a frizzy-haired hacker (Nathalie Emmanuel, TV’s Game of Thrones) who conveniently looks dynamite in a bikini. And who else does the U.S. government rely upon to quash the threat but a bunch of grease monkeys with an extended subscription to Motor Trend … but only for the pictures.

So stuffed to the brim is F7 that it juggles two villains: the aforementioned international terrorist (Djimon Hounsou, Guardians of the Galaxy) and a British special-ops assassin (Jason Statham, The Expendables 3) who’s hissing-snake evil in his quest for vengeance following the murder of his F6-antagonist brother. As for the movie’s three set pieces, “big” doesn’t do them justice. They’re so outrageous — and know it — that they remind one of elementary schoolers tearing up Mom’s garden by playing with Hot Wheels: Cars parachute from military aircraft! Cars fly from skyscraper to skyscraper! Cars leap hovering helicopters! Whatever they dream up has been rendered possible and sold as plausible.

Not wanting to mess with a good thing — assuming you found the past couple of sequels to be that (and I did) — F7 retains that fizzy feeling for more than two hours, with Wan turning in what amounts to an all-star edition that presents practically every not-dead character from previous installments as audience rewards, complete with intentionally howl-worthy dialogue. The studio juggernaut feels like a love letter — or a “swipe right” on Tinder — to those long-haul fans who, like Dom, aim to live their lives a quarter-mile at a time. (That it marks the final bow for co-star Paul Walker, who died tragically halfway through filming, makes those good vibes stickier.)

New to the fold on sides both heroic and hateful are a smooth-as-snot Kurt Russell (Grindhouse); Ong-Bak’s Tony Jaa, Thailand’s answer to Jackie Chan; and UFC champ Ronda Rousey. Among the most notable returners is Diesel’s belly button, which, jutting from beneath a muscle shirt in the fiery climax, resembles a rather intimidating camel toe. —Rod Lott

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As reimagined by director Brett Ratner, Hercules is half-god, half-human and all but a lost cause. Hardly under-represented in cinema history, the mythological hero has been embraced by the public consciousness worldwide for centuries, largely through the “12 labors” tales that found him battling a three-headed dog and slaying the Hydra. Assuming you ditch the one about Herc having to clean stables in a day’s time, these stories are arguably the most ripe for screen adaptations; naturally, Ratner does away with them in the prologue, showing us only pieces of a few, like a greatest-hits reel. Tellingly, these are the high points of the film’s trailer, so you’re in for a long 98 minutes.

Based on Radical Comics’ series, this Hercules (Dwayne Johnson, Fast & Furious 6) toils for gold as a freelance mercenary (characters spit that word like a slur, the way “liberal” is used today), despite being the son of Zeus. The story’s stone wheels start moving when Herc is hired by Lord Cotys (John Hurt, V for Vendetta) to help quell a civil war in Thrace. With half a dozen special-skilled sidekicks (Dark City’s Rufus Sewell and Deadwood’s Ian McShane among the most notable) supporting him, Herc preps for battle by donning the skin of a vicious lion he once killed, draping it over his head the way preschoolers do security blankets. Speaking of animals, Herc later punches wolves.

Although with little variety from one to the next, the war sequences are staged with far greater competence than Ratner’s track record with action would have us expect — at least any action scene not involving Jackie Chan’s dazzling acrobatics, that is. But lordy, is this epic dull. More mortal than its main character, the film is doomed from the start when two CGI snakes look as if they were created on an iPhone app someone downloaded for free through a Starbucks promotion. Shorn nearly completely of the fantastical elements that make previous Hercules flicks such a hoot to watch — Cannon’s early ’80s pair of Lou Ferrigno vehicles, in particular — this massively budgeted monstrosity fails to muster any significant feelings beyond boredom and contempt. It’s even too soulless to be fun, for which, all other things being equal, I gladly would have settled. By comparison, Johnson’s similar-in-appearance Scorpion King is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

None of this is Johnson’s fault; as always, the guy perspires charisma. Ratner errs in letting too much humor show through, to where everyone is at the ready with a quip engineered for pandering laughter, which would be a masterstroke if the Rush Hour conductor were making — or remaking — Hercules in New York. He was not. He made an action-adventure summer blockbuster so beholden to mass appeal, each reel has been cast in that Jerry Bruckheimer-favored Instagram filter marked “Weasel Piss.”

To be fair, Ratner’s Hercules is more watchable than 2014’s competing Greco-Roman project, Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules. (To be fair again, Harlin left the bar set at ground-level.) This Herc pic is so far from mighty, Greece is not the word. —Rod Lott

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