Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Truly Dreadful Film

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The sixth installment in this street racer saga begins with Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) racing to become a father with Mia (Jordana Brewster). Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) has shacked up with Elena (Elsa Pataky). Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is on the hunt for a new criminal Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) who has built a crew which includes Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), back from the dead. Hobbs recruits Dom to create a team to hunt down Shaw. With a deal for full pardons and the return of Letty, Dom and Brian agree to work with Hobbs reassembling the team from the previous film including Tej (Ludacris), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Han (Sung Kang), and Gisele (Gal Gadot). Hobbs's partner Riley (Gina Carano) also joins the group as they investigate Shaw.Their first encounter comes from an informer but turns out to be a distraction for a heist of Interpol. Shaw drives a low-riding, hydraulic vehicle with a sloped front that can flip police cars as he escapes. Shaw's team, somewhat a mirror of Dom's team, includes Vegh (Clara Paget), Klaus (Kim Kold), and Jah (Joe Taslim). Owen Shaw's scheme is to build a technology bomb that could knock out the power of an entire city. They learn about Dom's team as Dom's team investigate Shaw's. Their encounter leads to violent chases through the streets and subway tunnels of London.Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

After the events in the previous film Dom, Brian and the rest of the team have retired from their lives on the wrong side of the law. Then Hobbs comes round asking for help bringing down a gang who recently attacked a military convoy in Moscow and stole a component of a weapons system. He persuades Dom to take the job by showing him a picture of Letty, his presumed dead former girlfriend, who is now working for the gang lead by Owen Shaw, a former Major in the SAS. Dom, Brian and their team assemble in London, where Shaw's gang are now located. Here is becomes apparent that Letty is indeed alive but she has no memory of her life before the accident that everybody thought killed her. After a number of incidents in London the action moves to Spain where Shaw steals the final component in the system; the team will have to take some of their greatest risks yet if they are to stop him getting away with it.If you are looking for realism then this isn't the film for you but if you want great, almost non-stop, action then you could do a lot worse. Vin Diesel and Brian O'Conner continue to impress as Dom and Brian and it was a lot of fun having these characters work with, rather than against, Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs. It was great to see Michelle Rodriguez return as Letty; having her character suffer from amnesia may be a bit of a cliché but it works as a means of explaining why she never contacted Dom and justifies having her working for the bad guys. As one would expect there is lots of great over-the-top-action; this includes explosions, gunfights and the inevitable chases… one of which involves a tank! The film also goes back to its roots with a street race between Dom and Letty; they aren't trying to kill each other; just be the fastest round the course. Overall I'd recommend this to all fans of mindless action; it might not be realistic but the action is great and the whole film is a lot of fun.

Unlike the review written by Steve Pulaski, I'm not going to get into homo eroticism and other such psydointellecual tripe, this movie is just a bad Robert Ludlum knockoff. In fact, most of his stuff is pretty horrible to begin with (not to mention his ghost written post death, Matt Damen dreck). There's nothing fast or furious about this movie. What few chase scenes there are in this movie are all hacked to pieces. The shots of the actors faces are too numerous and are nothing more than filler. One "Bullitt" or "The Vanishing Point" is worth a thousand "Fast and Furious 6". But considering how much money this movie made, how can you argue with it. The "down low " culture of 15 year olds has taken over. The good old days of car chases is dead and buried. Man buns and Taliban beards now rule.

It seems as if these movies are getting better and better as time goes on (though not so good that they warrant anything more than a seven – they are mindless actions movies. In a way it seems like ages since I watched the first couple of movies and also, in a way, they simply seem to be nothing like the ones that are being churned out now. In fact, it seems that ever since Justin Lin took the helm the movies have simply gone from being rather dull cop movies to being a full blown, fully intense, action movie. Mind you, with this one having a tank roaring down a motorway it does make me wander how Lin is going to top the previous editions in numbers 8 and 9 (IMDB suggested that after number 8 there are another three movies but I suspect that this is a typo).Anyway, after striking it rich in Rio by stealing a hundred million dollars off of a drug lord, the crew have all gone their separate ways. However Hobbs as been tipped off that Vincent's girlfriend isn't actually dead, and in fact involved with some rather despicable characters that make Toretto, O'Conner and their team look like angels (and since they are the heroes of the film you could suggest that they are, but they are more like anti-heroes than anything else). Anyway Hobbs gets in contact them because he realises that the best way to catch a crook is with a crook, and of course Toretto is the first that comes to mind.Number six is set in London, which is a good thing because I have been to London – three times. Okay, I can hardly call myself an expert on the city, but I do have this attachment to the place, and do enjoy watching movies set there, even if they do stupid things, like having a drag race through the centre of the city, pass Picadilly Circus and finishing up at Battersea when it is impossible it escape the stop start traffic unless it is 6:00 am on a Sunday morning (okay, it isn't that bad, but try driving along Euston road and see how long it takes you to get from Islington and out of the city).In a way this film seems to deal more with a collection of anti-heroes, and sort of exposes Vin Diesel's roleplaying past – having people with different talents working together as part of a team is something that is central to most, if not all, roleplaying games, and they tend to work a lot better if you aren't constrained by a government organisation. Okay, Diesel and Walker are still the major characters, and also the precision drivers, and they still have a single drag race in the film (though there are plenty of car chases, including one with a tank), but we are now moving on to much bigger things – in fact no more drug lords because now we are up against mercenaries who are doing things that your average drug-lord isn't getting involved in. In the end, expect a pretty wild ride, but nothing incredibly deep.