Fast and Furious 6

Fast and Furious 6 - Dir. Justin Lin (2013)

Fast five…furious six.

Who would have thought that the Fast and Furious franchise would still be going strong over a decade later? Probably not anyone who has seen the early films. The Fast and the Furious was a rough looking B-movie directed by schlockmaster Rob Cohen with a story lifted right out of Point Break, just with cars instead of surfboards. 2 Fast 2 Furious was a mind-numbing take on the buddy action pic that was at least benefited from the gorgeous Miami setting and slick direction by John Singleton. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was a threequel that should have gone straight to video as it featured none of the original actors though Vin Diesel made a brief cameo. What saves Tokyo Drift from the scrapheap were some cool racing sequences, the introduction of Sung Kang as the laid back Han, and Justin Lin stepping behind the wheel to steer the series forward.

Fast and Furious was a fresh start, doing away with the articles and subtitles as it transitioned the franchise from the subculture of street racing to thunderous action. Fast Five was essentially The Avengers on four wheels, culling together an all-star team of past characters and reveling in widescreen vehicular mayhem. Good to know that Furious 6 is more of the same.

When last we left them, Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his cohorts were living the high life after stealing millions of dollars from a Brazilian drug lord. Not exactly hiding his newfound wealth, Toretto is easily found by federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), who recruits his band of racers to bring down a new gang led by a former Special Forces operative named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). One of Shaw's henchmen just happens to be Toretto's previously dead girlfriend Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), now suffering from amnesia. Shaw has cut a path of destruction across Europe in an attempt to steal the parts to build an electromagnetic weapon that can disable a country's entire defense network.

Furious 6 features a loaded ensemble and the movie doesn't give everybody a fair share of the spotlight. Jordana Brewster's Mia Toretto, for example, is pushed off to the side. Meanwhile, the charisma of Dwayne Johnson and the braggadocio of Tyrese Gibson more than offset the monotone growling of Vin Diesel and the bland Paul Walker. Screenwriter Chris Morgan, who has been at Lin's side since Tokyo Drift, doesn't write the snappiest banter, but the chemistry of the principal cast make it work. In regards to the new characters, Luke Evans doesn't make much of an impression as the villain, mostly because there isn't a lot on the page aside from his quest for a MacGuffin device. Gina Carano is a welcome addition though she's only there for a pair of knockdown, drag-out catfights with Michelle Rodriguez. Also thrown into the mix is Joe Taslim from The Raid: Redemption who gets into a wicked brawl with Gibson, Kang and a handful of hapless Bobbies in the London subway.

Despite some fun fisticuffs, the driving sequences don't match up to Fast Five, especially the climactic carnage through the streets of Rio. After a lengthy opening section in which the band gets back together, Lin finally gets loose with a London chase. There's some cool stuff such as the use of a modified formula-1 racer with a ramp that flips oncoming cars. However, most of the action is lost in the frenetic camerawork and the dark nighttime setting. The same problems occur at the conclusion during a wild set piece in which our heroes race alongside a massive cargo plane on what must have been the longest runway in the world. The pursuit is broken up into several smaller battles, which have been energetically edited together. The best sequence happens to be when Shaw hijacks a tank and callously crushes innocent bystanders on the highway.

Fast and Furious 6 is everything you want from an overblown summer blockbuster. The engines roar at ear-splitting decibels as the g-forces push against you until your brain cells turn to mush. There's some apprehension about Fast and Furious 7 since Universal fast-tracked (no pun intended) for next summer leading to the departure of Justin Lin and the arrival of James Wan (Saw, Insidious). However, the post-credit sequence effectively teases that we will be in for quite a ride.

P.S. – Kudos go to Morgan and Lin for their architecture of the series mythology. Either through meticulous planning or just last-minute retcons, they've managed to cast Tokyo Drift, arguably the worst of the franchise, into a new intriguing light.

Rating: *** (*****)

Fast Five

Fast Five - Dir. Justin Lin (2011)

The Fast & the Furious franchise revs its engines for an improbable fifth time. The gang is all back, faster than ever and not as furious as before, according to the shortened title.

Fast Five immediately picks up where Fast & Furious left off with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) rescued from a prison bus by rogue law officer Brian O'Connor and girlfriend Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster). The trio flees to picturesque Rio de Janeiro where they find themselves on the hit list of local kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), who has an army of goons and half the police force at his disposal. Our protagonists strike back by initiating a daring plan to steal $100 million locked tight in a high-tech vault underneath the police station. In order to do so, they must assemble an all-star crew of characters from previous films, including the laid-back Han (Sung Kang), Israeli bombshell Gisele (Gal Gadot), and glib motor mouth Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson).

Their complex scheme grows even more complicated with the introduction of a hard-assed federal agent named Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) tasked with bringing in the fugitives.

Fast Five is everything you expect it to be. This isn't Harold Pinter, but a robust precursor to the big-budget extravaganzas of summer movie season. Fast Five speaks to the inner child of anyone who spent their youth smashing Hot Wheels together. If you tune into NASCAR events in the hopes of seeing a fiery wreck, then this is the movie for you. Fast Five is junk food cinema so slickly directed by Justin Lin (who helmed the previous two pictures) that even the subtitles have to stylishly fly across the screen. The franchise is refreshed by its new environment with Rio deftly replacing the urban cityscapes of the earlier movies. As required by any film shot in the Brazilian city, there are sweeping panorama shots all revolving around the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer. Fast Five is hardly a travelogue to promote tourism considering all the drug labs, corrupt cops, and machine gun toting teenagers. It's a far cry from the city full of happy-go-lucky song birds depicted in Blue Sky Studios' Rio. The local government is probably longing for the days when all they had to deal with was The Simpsons.

Lin isn't the most innovative action director around, but he's competent enough to achieve the wanton destruction necessary to sate the ids of the audience. The film opens with a bus crash, and follows up with the gang stealing muscle cars off a moving train. As seen in the trailer, it all culminates with Toretto and O'Connor driving off a bridge and leaping into the water ala Butch and Sundance. The climax sees our heroes ripping through the streets while hauling behind the aforementioned vault. Storefronts are shattered and dozens of cars are wrecked, crumpled, and flung off the roads. The action isn't all vehicular carnage, there's a fast-paced foot chase over the rooftops of the favelas and a bald-headed alpha male smackdown between Vin Diesel and the ass-kicker formerly known as The Rock. While there is a surprising lack of scantily-clad babes, Gal Gadot does show off her shapely bikini bod as a welcome contrast to all the sweaty beefcake being thrown about. Also added to the mix is Elsa Pataky (wife of Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth) as a rookie cop and the lone officer not on Reyes' payroll.

The acting is exactly what you'd expect as well. Paul Walker continues to be the definition of white bread imbuing O'Connor with a special kind of blandness. Meanwhile, co-star Vin Diesel almost lapses into self-parody as Toretti, a man of few words and even fewer facial expressions. Diesel mostly stands stoically and growls a few curt sentences.

Long-time followers the series may be disappointed to find street racing has taken a backseat for this latest sequel. The drastic change is wholly exemplified when Toretto and O'Connor return to a familiar setting to challenge a local racer. The race is glommed over entirely as the movie cuts to Toretto enjoying his spoils of war. Lin and screenwriter Chris Morgan reach out to a wider audience by turning Fast Five into a heist picture with an Ocean's Eleven-sized ensemble. The almost unwieldy cast isn't the only thing bloated here. Indicative of Hollywood excess, Fast Five stands at two hours and ten minutes, which is about thirty minutes too long for a movie like this. Screen time is padded out by unnecessary and laughable scenes attempting to inject some sort of gravitas and emotional depth to its cardboard characters. Let's face facts; the majority of the audience isn't invested in heartfelt soliloquies about Toretto's search for familial stability or O'Connor's struggle with impending fatherhood. They want to see cars get smashed, smashed real good.

Who would have thought these films would still be kicking around a decade later? Fast Five is easily the best picture in the series, which might sound like a backhanded compliment. The original movie was essentially Point Break with cars, instead of surfboards. The ridiculously named 2 Fast 2 Furious was just Bad Boys-lite and the less said about the direct-to-video level Tokyo Drift, the better. Fast Five more than makes up for the leaden actioner that was the article-less Fast & Furious by offering the simple pleasures of loud, tire-screeching spectacle. Even if it does feel like it was written by a five-year old.

Be sure to stay through the ending credits for an additional scene that serves as a prelude for the inevitable Fast Six.

Rating: *** (*****)

Knight and Day

Knight and Day - Dir. James Mangold (2010)


I’ve made it known that I am able to set aside an actor’s or filmmaker’s personal life in order to enjoy their work. Despite his general craziness in real life, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Tom Cruise’s output over the last few years such as the Mission: Impossible franchise and Minority Report, one of the best films of the past decade. And who can forget his profanity-laced performance in Tropic Thunder? Cruise is an actor who enjoys working in big-budget, Hollywood pictures. However, you can’t help but feel that his couch jumping antics have dulled his star power.

Cruise attempts to play up his action hero persona in Knight and Day alongside his Vanilla Sky co-star, Cameron Diaz. Diaz is June Havens who runs an auto body shop in Boston and is flying out of Wichita after picking up some parts. She bumps into Roy Miller (Cruise) at the airport and winds up on a plane full of assassins. Miller dispatches the passengers, crew, and even the pilots before landing the plane in a cornfield.

As with all spy movies, there’s a MacGuffin at the center of it all. In this case, it is a perpetual energy battery (AA-sized) code-named the Zephyr. Miller claims to be a CIA agent who was double-crossed by his partner Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) who hopes to sell the battery to a Spanish arms dealer (Jordi Molla). The CIA claim Miller has gone completely off his rocker and cannot discern from reality and delusion. Shanghaied on a globe-trotting adventure, June finds herself falling for Miller while questioning the truth about him.

Knight and Day certainly had potential to be something different. I didn’t expect Cruise to poke fun of his personal life, but he doesn’t attempt to ridicule his on-screen persona either. He simply coasts by on the same jittery charm he’s always had. The film doesn’t attempt to lampoon the familiar tropes of the spy thriller. Instead, it simply revels in them, employing cliché after cliché.

The latest entry in this year’s rash of action/romantic comedy hybrids, Knight and Day kicks off with the rom-com staple of the meet cute before bouncing back and forth from genres. Compared to similar movies like The Bounty Hunter and Killers, Knight and Day does action bigger and better. Credit goes to director James Mangold whose diverse filmography includes Kate & Leopold, Walk the Line, and 3:10 To Yuma. Mangold keeps the film from really dragging even if the action sequences come off as lightweight Jason Bourne. Once the action subsides, we’re left with comedy and drama that fall flat. The banter feels contrived and the plot lacks any element of mystery. As if Tom Cruise could be anything other than the hero.

Cruise’s character may be defined, but they can’t seem to make up their mind about Diaz. One moment she’s a spastic mess shrieking in fear, the next she goes into John Woo mode while straddling Cruise as they rip down the streets of Barcelona on a motorcycle.

Though first-timer Patrick O’Neill is the only credited writer, the script was passed through the hands of nearly a dozen other writers, including Mangold himself. Knight and Day is the kind of utterly conventional picture that comes from filmmaking by committee. Dull, toothless, and forgettable.

Rating: *

Date Night

Date Night - Dir. Shawn Levy (2010)


Putting Steve Carell and Tina Fey together seems like an easy way to find comedic gold. With his work on The Daily Show and The Office, Carrell cemented his status as a bankable movie star following the success of The 40-Year Old Virgin. Fey has done the same on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock. Though she wrote Mean Girls and took a supporting role, she has yet to find a star vehicle worthy of her talents. Date Night is definitely not it.

Carrell and Fey star as Phil and Claire Foster, married with two kids and living in suburban New Jersey. He’s an accountant and she’s a real estate agent. Hoping to shake up their stagnant relationship, the Fosters hope to get a table at a trendy new restaurant in Manhattan. They wind up stealing another couple’s reservations, which becomes a running gag throughout the movie. A case of mistaken identity sends them on the run from a pair of gun-toting thugs (Common and Jimmi Simpson) who are after a flash drive. That’s just the beginning of one crazy night that involves car chases, crooked cops, and mobsters.

Taraji P. Henson co-stars as a sympathetic police detective and Mark Wahlberg appears as a perennially shirtless securities expert. Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig have maybe one scene each as another married couple on the outs. James Franco and Mila Kunis round out the cast as a two low-rent crooks named Taste and Whippit who originally made the reservation. They almost manage to derail the picture into something livelier.

Those of you expecting Date Night to be a Hitchcockian edge of your seat thriller ala The Man Who Knew Too Much must have severe brain damage. The jokes come straight out of a bad 80’s sitcom with some labored slapstick gags thrown in for good measure. Fey and Carrell are never allowed to rise above the bland, cardboard characters they play, despite their best efforts. Date Night’s funniest moments don’t occur during the movie at all, but in the outtakes shown over the end credits. Given the freedom to adlib, they’re able to show off the natural wit that made them stars, coming up with funnier material than what was provided for them.

Rating: *

Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious - Dir. Justin Lin (2009)


The original film in the Fast & Furious franchise, directed by schlockmeister Rob Cohen, was essentially Point Break with cars instead of surfboards and Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto as a more intense anti-hero than Patrick Swayze’s Zen-like Bohdi. Both films end with the protagonist (Paul Walker in the former, Keanu Reeves in the latter, both equally wooden) reaching a level of respect for his nemesis and allowing him to flee on his own terms. Following The Fast and the Furious was the ridiculously titled sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious (now helmed by John Singleton), with only Paul Walker returning as FBI agent Brian O’Conner. A third film of direct-to-video quality was unfathomably foisted onto the public. Directed by Justin Lin, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift dumped all previous characters though Toretto appears towards the end in a quick cameo.

For those who find articles too difficult to remember, the succinctly titled Fast & Furious, is likely to be right up your alley. Toretto and his girlfriend, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), have fled the U.S. since the first film and have found their way to the Dominican Republic. After Toretto strikes out on his own, he learns that Letty has been murdered in L.A. by a drug lord named Arturo Braga. Returning to America, Toretto runs right into O’Conner is also tracking down Braga. They reluctantly agree to work together to work their way into Braga’s organization which has been smuggling drugs across the border with street racers as the mules.

I’ve probably made the paper thin plot sound far more complex than it actually was. Fast & Furious offers nothing new to anybody who hasn’t already seen a million other action films. Walker is the scruffy rebel smothered by his by-the-books superiors while Jordana Brewster fills the role of the sweet girl caught in the middle of the conflict. I think Vin Diesel is a better actor than most give him credit for, but here he’s just required to be the burly, baritone beefcake who stands there and looks menacing.

Fast & Furious does break out of the starting gate with a strong set piece featuring Toretto’s gang attempting to highjack a gasoline tanker truck. If you saw the trailer, you know what I’m talking about. But, the rest of the film gets saddled with clichés, painful dialogue, and leaden performances. The climax is built around a chase sequence with cars racing through a network of underground mining tunnels. While it might have seemed cooler on paper, the final product leaves much to be desired. The race is lit too darkly while the shots and angles are too muddled to give you any idea of what was happening. It’s nearly as disorienting as the opening car chase in Quantum of Solace. On top of all that, the CGI cars make the sequence look like something out of a video game. Justin Lin was once the toast of the indie scene after the success of Better Luck Tomorrow, yet he seems more than content with making mainstream pap.

Was anyone truly clamoring for a FOURTH installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise? Surprisingly, there were as Fast & Furious did over $70 million in box office its opening weekend, a record for the month of April. Is it exactly high art? Nope, but it is brainless entertainment and a slightly satisfying (if fattening) appetizer for those looking to whet their taste buds for the upcoming summer blockbuster season.

Rating: * 1/2