The release of "Furious 7," the latest installment in the long-running and hugely profitable "Fast and the Furious" franchise, has prompted plenty of hosannas for a series that has a racially diverse cast, great action sequences and massive international appeal.

And while I don't want to argue that "Furious 7," one of the weaker recent installments in the franchise, is anything other than a muscle-bound bonbon, it is an excuse for me to sing the praises of Michelle Rodriguez's performance as Letty Ortiz, the one woman in Dominic Toretto's (Vin Diesel) crew of very fast, very daring drivers.

Letty represents a sharp reversal of the gender roles that dominate both action movies and romantic dramas. While she's often in danger, she's rarely in distress. In "Furious 7," she's part of the crew protecting the franchise's first real damsel.

While Letty had a childhood crush on Dom that grew into an enduring, grown-up love affair, she's hardly the supplicant partner in their relationship. And while Letty is, by her own repeated description, a ride-or-die chick, she's one with a healthy sense of her own priorities: She's an equal, rather than Dom's backup.

The "Fast and the Furious" franchise is justly famous for its stunts, but for all that the characters tow safes down busy thoroughfares and drive cars out of planes, the movies have a big, gooey emotional center. The characters are bonded together by Dom's insistence that they're family by choice. And while Diesel plays Dom as a hunk of determined, charismatic granite, he brings a real romanticism to his relationship with Letty.

[PHOTO GALLERY]:
Furious 7 is back, folks!

In "Fast and Furious," when Dom believes Letty is dead, he shows a devotion to her in the face of temptation that would shame even a stalwart Victorian widower. "Furious 7″ is bracketed by a series of gestures Dom makes to Letty, all of which seem as though they might be leading up to a proposal.

You can see why Dom is so besotted: The "Fast and the Furious" movies have lots of up-skirt shots at drag races and a tendency to treat snazzy engines and cool cars as if they're sex objects, but they're somewhat light on actual sex scenes. "The Fast and the Furious" has two scenes that establish Letty's strong, dominant sexual charisma, all without ever requiring her to remove a stitch of clothing or to go soft on us.

In one moment, when it seems like Dom might be headed for a fight at a party, Letty shows up to commandeer his attention, telling him, "You look a bit tired ... I think you should go upstairs and give me a massage." And in another sequence the night before a big operation, we see Letty stripping off Dom's coveralls, sharing our lusty appreciation of his sculpted chest: He may grab her posterior, but Diesel is the one on display, not Rodriguez.

In fact, Letty is no one's object, not Dom's, not the competitors who show up for Race Wars, not ours. In "The Fast and the Furious," when she's matched up against a driver who is harassing her with kissing noises and innuendo at the starting line, Letty curtly informs him that "You want a piece of a--, go to Hollywood Boulevard. You want an adrenaline rush, that'll be two large." When he shuts up and races, she blows him away.

When "Furious 7″ takes Dom, Letty and the crew to Abu Dhabi, they have to trade in their coveralls and sneakers for formalwear to sneak into a party so they can steal a very souped-up car. A lesser movie might have taken this opportunity to glam Letty up, to demonstrate that she's just as comfortable being a babe or an ornament, as she is tinkering with the guts of a car or driving one very, very fast.

But the "Fast and the Furious" franchise is distinguished by its careful, consistent attention to character, Letty doesn't quite seem at home in her finery, even though she looks smashing in it. And while she's never exactly been sexually retiring, Letty flushes under the intensity of Dom's gaze when they share a private moment in an elevator, and he remembers a moment from their past that has been lost to her because of the recurring amnesia from her accident.

During the heist, it's a relief when Letty gets to square off with Kara (UFC fighter Ronda Rousey), a bodyguard for the man they're robbing. Watching them spring into action, shaking off the restrictions on body and manners implied by their formalwear, is like watching Bruce Banner turn into the Hulk without the accompanying shot of regret.

Letty doesn't just get her own fights: She has to rescue herself. When her amnesia makes her vulnerable to recruitment by a supervillain in "Fast & Furious 6," Dom may show up at the right time to help her out of a very dangerous action sequence, but Letty is ultimately the one who has to take the actions and make the choices that lead her back to her own family.

She is hugely devoted to Dom, but that doesn't prevent her from taking time to herself in "Furious 7″ to try to sort out her missing memory. And while Dom tries to give Letty prompts, he can't fix her. At a climactic sequence in the movie, it's Letty who talks Dom back from the brink, not the other way around.

Letty may be ride-or-die. But in the "Fast and the Furious" movies, that's a designation that lets her spend plenty of time in the driver's seat.