FAST AND FURIOUS 6

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Grade: C

Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Luke Evans, Gina Carano, Elsa Pataky and Jordanna Brewster

Premise: Dominic Toretto and his notorious gang of daredevil stunt drivers are recruited by a government agent to help thwart an international terrorist’s plans.

Rated PG-13 for intense action violence including multiple devastating car accident scenes, language, some disturbing images and some sexual content, including partial nudity

You’ve been through it. Everyone has. That night when the family gathers hungrily in the kitchen to see what’s for dinner, and mom answers their inquiries with one word: “Leftovers.” Depending on the family in question, this night can occur weekly, and, no matter how accustomed one is to it, Mom’s response almost always brings on a bit of grumbling and moaning. Why? Because leftovers simply aren’t as appetizing as something fresh, something just out of the oven, something just prepared. Leftovers are unoriginal, kinda boring, sometimes a little lacking in taste.

That’s what Fast and Furious 6 felt like to me when I watched it today. Leftovers. Something boring, unoriginal, something a little lacking in quality, that was just thrown together because the same recipe had previously wrought success. It bears all the same qualities as its successful predecessors, and, based on early box office returns, isn’t bothering most people as something lacking originality… But to those of us who care about real quality and freshness in movies, Fast 6 feels loud, clunky and dumb.

It didn’t have to be this way, by the way. Fast 6 didn’t have to be leftovers. In fact, I was actually excited to see it despite my usual exasperation with sequels. After all, 2011’s Fast Five brought some life back to the then-decade-old franchise with its big, appealing cast, spectacular final chase, and its indoctrination of a new star (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) into the fold alongside popular series vets Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. But Fast 6—it’s clear early on—is nothing special and lacks even that film’s snap, stumbling over clichéd dialogue, badly-edited action, and a script with more holes and gaps than a tennis racket.

The story doesn’t matter much, obviously. As long as there are some cool cars, frenetic action, some scantily-clad women and a few pithy one-liners thrown around by burly men bursting out of wife-beaters, Fast 6 has met its goal, right? In any case, as this film opens, series hero Dominic Toretto (Diesel, typically gruff), an international fugitive specializing in high-speed getaways, has found paradise in the remote Spanish islands. He lives in a sea-side villa next door to his sister Mia (Jordanna Brewster, all but forgotten) and her beau, ex-cop Brian O’Connor (Walker). They’ve just had a son, and Dom’s spending his down time in the arms of lovely Brazilian sweetheart Elena (Elsa Pataky). But trouble, of a sort, arrives in paradise in the person of government Search and Capture Officer Hobbs (Johnson), who was hunting Dom and his gang in the previous film until teaming up with them when his men were killed by a baddie’s minions. Hobbs isn’t there to arrest Dom, but to enlist his services. Turns out an ex-SAS operative (Luke Evans) by the name of Owen Shaw has been leading a highly-trained team of individuals specializing in weapons, technology, and vehicular mayhem, and he’s after a secret government computer that might allow him to knock the power out of a whole city, and cause utter chaos. To combat Shaw and his team, Hobbs has come to recruit Dom and his.

They are-if you care and didn’t see Fast Five-motormouthed adrenaline junkie Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson), tech wizard Tej Parker (Chris Bridges), Israeli weapons specialist Giselle (Gal Gadot) and Asian slickster Han (Sung Kang). Also on hand is Hobbs’ partner, a gorgeous but flinty-eyed woman named Reilly (MMA star Gina Carano) who can crack bones as easily as she can smiles. Normally, the fiercely-loyal Dom wouldn’t dare take his “family” from their scattered happy places and put them in harm’s way, but Hobbs has a huge bargaining chip: a clear-as-day photo of one of Shaw’s accomplices, Dom’s lifelong love Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who Dom and all his friends believed died some time before.

That’s pretty much all you need to know (and yes, it was all in the trailer). The rest comes naturally. Mayhem ensues. Dom mumbles and groans about how important family is. Tires squeal and engines roar. Glass shatters. The filmmakers pretend we might decide Paul Walker is as cool as Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson. Tyrese makes countless jokes. Cars crash and flip over. Gina Carano and Michelle Rodriguez get in a few fistfights so vicious the cast of The Expendables would cringe. Dom’s live-in girlfriend Elena sits idly—even supportingly—by as Dom moves heaven and earth to win back the love of his life, whom he clearly still loves, brainwashed turncoat and all. Oh, and cars crash. Cars crash a lot.

There’s no problem with that, necessarily. It’s just that it not only feels familiar, it’s not even well done. Oh, the action is pretty cool (the action scenes are, I believe, the only reason to watch this movie), but everything else has either been done before, needs to be eliminated, or expanded upon a little bit more.

It’s a little sad seeing Walker back collecting a paycheck—he once had a promising career, and was actually the star of the first two films in the series. Diesel’s decent reprising the role that made him (one scene, in which he recounts highlights of his and Letty’s life together to the amnesiac Rodriguez, is the closest this film comes to having a soul). Johnson, whose A-list star magnitude and undeniable charisma helped lift the last film out of a yet-another-sequel rut, has been too fully indoctrinated—he’s only really interesting because he has huge muscles, and, of course, it’s more fun to watch people with big muscles do things than it is to watch other people. Rodriguez is always watchable but seems to have only two levels of personality--snarky and brooding--putting one in mind of a Latina Jennifer Lawrence. Luke Evans’ villain is little more than an Antonio Banderas lookalike. Tyrese is a pick-me-up just because he’s funnier than his costars, and all the major women are either gooey, too-supportive life partners (Brewster, Pataky) or ball-busting mavens (Carano, Gadot).

But no one expects great acting from a movie like this. The aforementioned scene between Diesel and Rodriguez where Dom tries to get Letty to remember him and recognize his affection for her works not because Diesel’s a great actor but because both actors in the scene have a significant screen presence, and because the dialogue evokes nostalgic thoughts of the earlier, better-made, films in the franchise. And like I said, the action scenes are cool, but…when, even in a movie like this, is too much too much? People survive devastating car wrecks with nary a scratch when the script requires them to (when it’s too early in the film for anyone to croak) and then similarly fail to survive similar wrecks—also when the script requires them to (when the movie’s almost over). All the main players who die do so quickly, bloodlessly, and their deaths are never explored, to the point that you have a hard time believing anything important has happened. Here’s where I point out that Fast 6 also expects us to believe some characters can survive being catapulted fifty feet from a car and landing halfway through another vehicle’s windshield but others can’t survive a five-foot fall.

There’s also a scene I have to point out—one in which Fast 6, by appearance and intention a popcorn blockbuster, skirts dangerously close to bad taste. After hijacking a military convoy containing the last bit of data for the aforementioned all-powerful computer chip, Shaw and his team commandeer an army tank and begin churning down the highway, against traffic. Dom and his gang are out to try and distract/stop them, whipping around in little sports cars, and they thought a tank would be a nice answer. In any case, as this tank began racing down the highway, its speeding treads tearing incoming cars to sawdust, I was struck by a horrible thought: people are being killed in those cars, probably being torn to shreds, and the movie couldn’t care less because it looks cool to have a speeding tank running over cars. Rodriguez’s character does begin chiding Shaw for this, but the filmmakers plainly don’t expect the audience to care beyond a level of whoa, that’s one bad dude. No, what I thought was: whoa, a lot of people are dying really horrible deaths, and the filmmakers assume we don’t care as long as all the name actors are still around. Just a nasty impression I got.

Well anyway, I could go on, but, needless to say, Fast 6 provides some exciting car-chases and some enjoyable badass fisticuffs (Carano/Rodriguez, Johnson/muscular dudes fighting for the bad guys, Diesel/Evans, Carano/Rodriguez again), but it doesn’t feel very new or fresh. There’s little character development, less emotion, and one actually legitimate attempt at screenwriting sleight-of-hand, concerning the fate of a character who supposedly died in one of the previous installments, is ruined by a gimmick spoiler as to who will guest-star in the next installment. Fast Seven? Um….

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Directed by Justin Lin

Written for the Screen by Chris Morgan; Based on Characters Created by Gary Scott Thompson

Rated PG-13

Length: 130 minutes