Fast & Furious 6 : Movie Review

This is my first The Fast and the Furious film in more than a decade. And yet, despite the inevitable gaps in continuity that have resulted in my understanding of the latest installment - this is No. 6 - the film is actually slightly more enjoyable than one would expect the sixth installment of any franchise to be.

One reason for this is the entertainment value of a uniquely thrilling scene toward the end of the film that has been widely derided as preposterous (rightly so, I might add). But it is this scene, a car chase with a tank bearing down on oncoming traffic on a highway in Spain, that makes it known, loudly and unmistakably, that the film (at least briefly) seeks to entertain at all cost, even if we end up guffawing at its antics.

The scene in question is so ridiculous it should be seen to be - almost - believed (not unlike James Bond's jump into a moving plane at the beginning of GoldenEye), but it is visually much better conceived than many of the other car chases in the film. These earlier car chases don't even put the viewer in the driver's seat and instead relegate the viewing experience to one that is exterior rather than interior. However, the exterior shots - many of them rapid-fire flyovers of the coastal highway on which the action is taking place - are sometimes equally dazzling.

The gang, having retired or retreated since they previous escapades, are promised amnesty by Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) if they help him track down and capture a man called Shaw, who races fast cars and has created some havoc in Moscow.

Fast & Furious 6
***
Directed by Justin Lin
With Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Luke Evans

Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) decides to help, and Toretto's Eleven assist him in getting the job done. But there is a complication: Toretto's former girlfriend Letty, who everybody thought was dead after a job had gone wrong in an earlier film, suddenly appears as part of Shaw's team. She suffers from amnesia, but of course the only thing she hasn't forgotten is how to drive like she stole it.

The film's actors are not particularly memorable, although Paul Walker, who plays Brian, the former cop who was seduced by wheels a long time ago, displays the widest range of emotion. Diesel, on the other hand, has trouble expressing any emotion, and the smooth growl that has become his trademark diction is consistently his voice of choice. And Johnson, who should play comedy rather than drama, does amateur theater by half-closing his eyes in faux concentration in response to anything serious being said.

The team's nemesis, Shaw, is played by Luke Evans, who looks slightly more scruffy than usual here but is still a remarkably ineffectual villain who doesn't inspire much fear.

Fast & Furious 6 is noteworthy for attracting a wide range of star power even after the series has been on the road for such a long time already, but their presence lifts the film to an unexpected level of competency, despite some poor directorial choices by Lin. For example, having mentioned earlier that the streets of London are exhaustively recorded by surveillance cameras, why did he choose to omit such footage from the London car chases? At another point, a running conversation is cut together from material shot by a camera that tracks again and again around a couple in dialogue.

The problem the film encounters in having so many seemingly important characters onscreen is that they all need some kind of development lest the narrative seem superficial, but while Lin does try his best to give us at least a few moments with everyone, he often forgoes smooth storytelling for the sake of jumping from one story to the next, and by leaving many scenes too early the momentum that is created evaporates all too quickly. What often makes ensemble films so effective is their ability to focus our attention on the skills of every individual that contribute to the grand plan.

One of the big mistakes in Fast & Furious 6, after the insanity that is the tank car chase, is for it to try to go serious. Granted, there is still another seemingly never-ending car chase waiting in the wings, one that sees an airplane charging straight down a runway … for nearly 10 minutes straight … but the goal of entertaining the audience is not as obvious as it was just moments earlier.

Had Lin gone for broke and thrown any semblance of realism out of the window, he could have created a genuinely entertaining piece of adrenaline-pumping cinema. He manages to do that in the scene with the tank, but his character development is mostly deficient, and for the most part his cast cannot live up to his half-hearted attempts at complexity.

To the wholly uninitiated, or those who have only seen one or two installments in the series, Fast & Furious 6 offers inconsistent thrills, but car chases (even ones staged with very little visual sensibility) are by their very nature something to get excited about, and therefore the film is interesting almost in spite of itself - and certainly in spite of its cast. The series has shown remarkable longevity, and while it may not be high art, it is by no means a wasted two hours at the cinema.