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: *** (*****)

Bullet to the Head

Bullet to the Head – Dir. Walter Hill (2013)

Is the time of the big name action star over? Try as hard as they might, guys like Jason Statham and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will never be the heirs apparent to Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. That’s okay because those muscle-bound matinee idols are still kicking, even if their luster has faded over the years. Arnold returned to his first starring role in over a decade with The Last Stand, which already seems to have disappeared from theaters weeks after release. Bruce Willis will return to the franchise that made him a bankable name with A Good Day to Die Hard. After having fun with the ensemble Expendables pictures, Stallone goes it solo for Bullet to the Head, which is loosely based on a French graphic novel.

Stallone isn’t the only old-timer returning to the fold. Bullet to the Head marks the return of Walter Hill, one of the stalwarts of the 80’s era. Hill hasn’t directed a feature film since 2002’s Undisputed and hasn’t helmed anything of significance since 1996’s underrated Last Man Standing. Hill’s resume includes The Warriors, Extreme Prejudice, Streets of Fire, and The Driver. He also has a memorable comedy under his belt in Brewster’s Millions with Richard Pryor. To top it off, the prolific Joel Silver is counted among the producers. Silver was a producer on classic action pictures such as Predator, Commando, Die Hard, 48 Hrs. (also directed by Hill), and the Lethal Weapon franchise with the latter two being prime examples of the buddy formula. That same formula is in full effect with Bullet to the Head, so much so that Silver replaced Thomas Jane with Sung Kang because one of the leads had to be a minority.

Stallone is Jimmy Bonomo aka Jimmy Bobo, an experienced hitman in New Orleans. He’s a nice hitman though because he doesn’t kill women or children. Bobo and his partner Louis Blanchard (Jon Seda) are having a few drinks at a redneck bar after taking out a coked up Hank Greely (Holt McCallany). The celebration is cut short when a hulking mercenary named Keegan (Jason Momoa) kills Louis while Bobo narrowly escapes. Greely used to be a cop in D.C. before turning dirty and his former partner, Taylor Kwon (Kang), arrives in town to investigate his murder. Kwon and Bobo form a shaky partnership and their mission leads them to Robert Nkomo Morel (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a ruthless African businessman, and his sniveling lawyer Marcus Baptiste (Christian Slater).

Stallone gives exactly the type of performance you expect from him, all stoic and badass as he mows down a succession of villains. Poor Sung Kang is given the thankless role of sidekick who gets to be on the receiving end of insulting nicknames like Confucius and Oddjob. Stallone gets the spotlight for the majority of the action as Kang stands off in the corner with his hands in his pockets. The most emotion he’s allowed to show is indignation whenever Bobo brutally kills someone. His biggest contribution is his Blackberry, which allows him to call headquarters to magically give him the location and pertinent info on every suspect in their sights. Of course, Bobo doesn’t appreciate all that newfangled technology. His idea of Google is breaking a guy’s legs.

The screenplay by Alessandro Camon (who also wrote The Messenger) sticks rigidly with genre conventions. It introduces Bobo’s beautiful and tattooed daughter, Lisa (Sarah Shahi), knowing full well Keegan will kidnap her just in time for a climatic confrontation. That showdown will take place in an abandoned warehouse because all bad guys have to have an abandoned warehouse. The bad guy also has to be foreign with a sinister accent that shows when he explains his evil schemes in laborious detail. The McGuffin in Bullet to the Head involves a folder (and later a flash drive) containing incriminating evidence that must be destroyed. This is the kind of movie that doesn’t concern itself with the fact that these items could be easily copied and distributed.

Hill directs the action with an old-school feel. Bullets rip through bodies with a healthy compliment of spraying blood. The editing gets a little too frenetic during the inevitable fight sequence between Stallone and Momoa. Hill does manage to set a noir-ish mood to the proceedings and captures the atmosphere of New Orleans, which has quickly become a Mecca for low-rent action movies. The Big Easy is to shoot ‘em ups what Bulgaria is to Sci-Fi Channel movies of the week.

Bullet to the Head is exactly the kind of actioner Stallone used to make during his glory days. It doesn’t come close to matching the quality of First Blood or Demolition Man, but it does linger right there with Cobra or Tango and Cash.

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: *** (*****)

Ninja Assassin

Ninja Assassin - Dir. James McTeigue (2009)


He’s not just a ninja. He’s not just an assassin. He’s a Ninja Assassin.

South Korean pop star Rain stars as Raizo, an orphan taken in by a clandestine order of ninjas. Trained from the start to become a lethal killer, Raizo eventually turns on his ninja clan. Mika (Naomie Harris), an investigator for Europol, begins finding connections with numerous assassinations committed for years by the ninjas. On the verge of uncovering their order, the ninjas send several members to kill her only to be stopped by Raizo. The pair team up to finish the ninjas once and for all. That’s pretty much it. Seriously, that one paragraph I wrote just saved you an hour and a half of your life.

The script by Matthew Sand, but was re-written by the very talented J. Michael Straczynzski who was probably more concerned about cashing his fat check than putting anything substantial on paper. After a bloody prologue where ninjas slaughter Yakuza, the film is dragged to a halt as it becomes bogged down by a series of flashbacks and exposition. The thin and predictable origin of the lead character could have easily been told in a minute rather than the laborious fashion it unfurled during the first act and most of the second. As if we really needed a detailed backstory for the hero. Oh, the audience has to feel an emotional connection to the character? This ain't weepy shit like Ordinary People.

It’s a while before the action kicks in which is pretty much the only reason for anybody to see a film called Ninja Assassin. The fight scenes are the movie’s biggest disappointment. Most the set pieces take place at night or in darkened rooms so it’s difficult to see what’s happening. It doesn’t help that the sequences are so poorly directed and edited. What little credibility Ninja Assassin might have had is forever lost due to excessive use of CGI, The blood, the weapons, and the dismembered limbs are all computer generated which take you right out of the movie. Something the Wachowskis (who produced this turd) know a lot about.

One critic called Ninja Assassin, the greatest ninja movie of all time. However, when your closest competition is American Ninja, it isn’t that hard to achieve such an accolade. The poor ninja seems to have been eclipsed in pop culture popularity by the vampire and the zombie. Something must be done to raise greater awareness for the ninja, but Ninja Assassin is not the answer.

Rating: * ½

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