‘Fast & Furious 6’: Mindless Entertainment Certain To Make Bank [Review]
Before Justin Lin’s Fast & Furious 6 hit theaters, Universal already green lit a Fast & Furious 7. At the time it was puzzling, but upon viewing Fast & Furious 6, all it really takes is the first twenty minutes of the latest juiced up film to understand why. The film is a car lover’s dream, as it acts as an action packed sound-scape of excitement. However, to really enjoy this film, you may want to leave your brain at the concession stand, as Fast & Furious 6 has more improbable plot lines and holes in it than ever before.
If anything, Fast & Furious 6 acts as a love letter to its fans, as it reunites Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), Han (Sung Kang), Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Tej (Ludacris) as a dysfunctional A-team of sorts.
The adventure begins when Hobbs visits Toretto’s glorious haven. He reveals that Toretto’s girlfriend Letty, who was believed to have died in a car accident, is alive albeit under implausible circumstances. Letty has sustained amnesia-like injuries and is with the most nonthreatening villain ever. His name is Owen Shaw, and he’s a Russian ex-Special Ops soldier. If the gang helps Hobbs to track down this dangerous man, it will bring Toretto to Letty and will clear the gang of their criminal past.
Shaw causes some major damage driving a pimped out Formula 1-style car that flips oncoming vehicles like no one’s business — also he’s preparing for world destruction in the form of a computer chip. Did we mention he has the guts to drive a tanker at the boys in an enormous car chase? So there’s that, too.
For Fast & Furious 6, director Justin Lin has the most significant role. He has the sole responsibility of making one of the biggest franchises interesting, while trying to dodge the trappings of having the film feel stale. Lin avoids this by confidently directing an action packed film that would get any adrenaline-junkie fan on the edge of their seat. It also speaks to the director’s comfort level with the franchise as he shoots the characters to exude all-American machosim by both playing up and making fun of its muscle head stereotype.
Lin is certainly self-aware as he’s not exactly directing an Oscar-winning film. There’s certainly plenty of passing moments between Hobbs and Toretto’s love/hate bromance that takes shots at men trying to be men with a capital M to suggest this. Then there are a few natural comedic moments from Taj (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson). At times they remain to be the most exciting characters to watch on screen as they banter.
Aside from comedic elements, don’t expect to see anything that resembles actual performances. Since learning of his girlfriend’s whereabouts one can easily deduce that subtlety is seen as overacting to Diesel. Looking every year of 45-years-old Diesel has absolutely no ability to emote, that is, if you’re not counting the sound his muscles make when he walks. The same can be said for Johnson, although he has the advantage of having charisma in his back pocket. No one is here for the performances, and the cast knows it as they play up the self-deprecating humorous bits. No one is taking this seriously, and perhaps because of this it’s exactly why they’re all making bank on the franchise.
Guilty pleasure at its best, the film has its share of unintentionally laughable moments from silly improbabilities. One that features Toretto propelling himself into the air and slamming into Letty only to boomerang the two of them on top of a car and living to race in the next scene. That said, if one can temporarily suspend beliefs in the laws of gravity it proves to be enjoyable.
The most entertaining element is the enormous action sequences. The most impressive sees a plane being held down by speeding cars. Visually, Lin has grown in his technique, featuring gorgeous crane shots of the team’s surroundings as he lingers on aggressive shots of the landscapes. From the sprawling hills in Spain, to the nightlife of London, Lin at times is overtly flamboyant with his bird’s eye view just as much as he is capturing an engine’s rev.
Its easy to cast the Fast & Furious films to have little to no substance. One would be right to assume that Fast & Furious is nothing more than mindless fun, but Lin’s Fast & Furious 6 doesn’t pretend to be a serious action film; in fact, it doesn’t try to over-extend itself from its title. Oddly enough, its this cinematic bravado that makes Fast & Furious 6 an action film worth viewing at least once.
