Fast & Furious 6, 2013.
Directed by Justin Lin.
Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Luke Evans, Michelle Rodriguez, Elsa Pataky, Jordana Brewster and Gina Carano.
SYNOPSIS:
The gang of car thieves and illegal street racers are brought out of retirement to face a global menace…and track down a long-lost member.
“That was ridiculous,” remarked one woman as we exited the theatre, as though that were a bad thing. Across the lobby from us was a table piled with hot dog wrappers and empty beer bottles, bribes from the PR team before the film began. Usually that means they want you drunk to watch the movie. It couldn’t have hurt.
For the uninitiated, the Fast & Furious franchise is about a group of car thieves. There’s Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), the gang’s leader; Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), the former-cop turned street racer; Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), the joker; Han (Sung Kang), the token Asian guy; and a whole bunch more. The team line-up has an Ocean’s Eleven feel to it, although only two of them could carry a film on their own (and that’s arguable). It’s why getting them all back together is so easy.
This odd bunch of criminals (who fled Mexico with a fortune in the previous installment) are all brought back together by federal agent Luke Hobbs (The Rock Dwayne Johnson) to track down and catch Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), an ex-SAS-type intent on stealing a device with the power to blind a city-full of people. Also, he has an English accent. Super evil.
The plot, really, exists to link together the film’s spectacular chase sequences. It seems quite often these days, in the Hollywood blockbusters, that fight scenes and chase scenes are just that: scenes showing a fight or a chase. What Fast & Furious 6 does, however, harkens back to The French Connection, or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in that its chase sequences posses an inner-narrative, a psychology. The race around London, for instance, has several entwining motives. Hobbs chases Shaw; Toretto pursues the ex-girlfriend, Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) he presumed dead; the rest of the gang go after the bad guys who raided an Interpol building. And each strain is layered further. Shaw drives a car that can flip oncoming police vehicles, like a full-scale realisation of Robot Wars. Toretto knows how Ortiz drives, and guesses her moves before she’s made them. The Interpol-robbing bad guys have a mechanism that can disable wheels on the good guys’ motors. These aren’t just cars chasing cars; they are well thought-out, layered sequences at breakneck speed.
Hobbs, in these scenes, is a tour de force in badassery. But it is to Roman that the show most definitely belongs. He’s greedy, loveable, a little bit dumb and very, very funny. Each of his lines are written in wonderful abandon to the indulgences of his character, and Gibson speaks them with relish. Unfortunately, he disappears into the background for the second half of the movie.
Which is where the problems come in. Fast & Furious 6 is a 130-minute long film. The movie rarely drags, but a few scenes being dropped wouldn’t have been missed. Scenes like those are when you begin to notice plot holes. Some are so large, the bad guys actually drive a tank through them. That zero tension exists between Toretto, O’Connor and their girlfriends (who are put in considerable danger because of their actions) is very lazy screenwriting.
The worst of F&F 6’s flaws, however, is the cheese. Some scenes, shots, and dialogue exchanges feel like they’re actively parodying themselves. A lonesome, Spanish guitar plays in the background. Cue sad scene. An electric riff begins. Cue action scene. The Rock and Vin Diesel’s stare-offs are too prolonged, bubbling with homoerotic tension and a hypnotically symmetrical baldness.
But after a while, myself, and those around me, began to cheer these cheesy moments, whoop for those plot holes and feats of ridiculousness. Physics don’t apply in the Fast & Furious Universe. The Rock throws people into the ceiling with the flick of a wrist (it’s no mistake he appears as ‘Samoan Thor’ on Tej’s called ID). Cars flip and bounce at the slightest tilt as though coated in flubber, while others remain rooted despite every obstacle imaginable. At one point, and to the audience’s great delight, Vin Diesel flies through the air at such length, and with such little consequence, that we could do nothing but applaud. A few stood. Others wept with joy.
It’s like laughing at a 14-year-old boy who’s dumb, and a little bit aggressive, and slightly tipsy. They’re all surface, those louts, and the best way to cope is to find them hilarious (otherwise you’ll go mad). But you know what? There’s a 14-year-old boy deep down in most of us (in a strictly non-Rolf Harris way), and to laugh at him is to mock ourselves. He comes out sometimes, accidentally leering at the newsagents’ top shelf, or playing GTA drunk.
All the way through Fast and Furious 6, you keep thinking: they’ve used all the toys here, where could they possibly go after this? They’ve got tanks and fast cars and gorgeous women. There’s double crosses and international terrorism and characters returning from the dead. They take down a huge, Herculean aircraft and storm a NATO base and wreck the city of London. They have The Rock. How can they top it?
And then, in an epilogue after the ‘Don’t Try This At Home’ disclaimer, they somehow manage it.
Oh my…*
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Oliver Davis (@OliDavis)
*The event at the end of the film is very easy to spoil, with the filmmakers announcing it a week before its release. It is also on its IMDb page. If you haven’t seen the spoiler already, I urge you not to seek it out. I haven’t been that surprised, nor let out a louder yelp of delight, since Chris Jericho entered the 2013 Royal Rumble at No.2.
