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: *** (*****)