Fast and Furious 6 Review

One of the things I hate about how some people talk about entertainment is using the term “popcorn” to give a free pass to something that isn’t particularly good, but not an abomination since it’s not trying to be high art.  It cheapens films like Fast and Furious 6 that succeed in being highly entertaining by implying simply looking to entertain is the lesser pursuit (it’s not).  Fast and Furious 6 is everything a good popcorn movie should be.  It has big, exciting action sequences.  It’s funny.  The two plus hour runtime is over much too quickly.   Simply put, I haven’t had this much unbridled fun at the movies since The Avengers.

It’s so strange that the franchise has found this grove this late.  Unlike many series that make it to the sixth installment, where it’s usually cynical cash grabs or sequels barely relating to the original, The Fast and the Furious is more successful than it’s ever been, both critically and commercially.  Of course it changed with 2011’s Fast Five, a Hail Mary tying in characters from the first four movies and taking the franchise into a new direction.  Rather than avoid or deny continuity from its growing canon, they embraced it and taken it into complicated directions you never would’ve expected it to.  As Matt Singer points out, the fact that they don’t ignore the fact that Fast Five and Fast and Furious 6 take place before The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and how they tie it together in the end of this film is kind of brilliant.

This time around, about a year after Fast Five, the crew are all living well off the money they stole in the last film when their former pursuer Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) recruits them to stop a man from selling a chip that could be devastating to a country’s infrastructure.  To be honest the villain, Shaw, and his objective don’t add a whole lot to the proceedings besides serving their purpose as antagonists.  The real hook is that among Shaw’s crew is Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), a former member of our heroes’ crew believed to be dead, which leads to a lot of talk about family.

One of the things that makes this film work so well is the people who made it are on board 100%.  So when something dumb happens (it seems like the characters are capable of super human abilities, like destroying concrete and landing on cars with no major medical consequences), I’m not insulted because I know the filmmakers knew what they were making and wanted to make it as awesome as possible, rules of reality be damned.

Director Justin Lin, who has directed every film in the franchise since Tokyo Drift and will be stepping down for part seven, keeps the film chugging along at a brisk pace, with plenty of exhilarating set pieces throughout.  It’s not just the car chases that are well done: the hand to hand combat scenes are great too, down to having one of the guys from The Raid: Redemption and MMA star Gina Carano in major fight scenes, not to mention gargantuan Dwayne Johnson.

I would say there is a little lull, maybe just action movie fatigue, in the second act, but they more than make up for it with not one, but two breathtakingly awesome set pieces.  There are so many huge action scenes that could be the climactic scene of other action movies.  Instead some of these happen in the first half hour.  You have the penultimate chase, which could easily be a climactic sequence.  Nope, there’s another scene that is so ridiculous, but ridiculously awesome you are on board regardless of its bare faced implausibility.

Fast and Furious 6 is the ultimate B-movie.  It does exactly what it sets out to do.  Although there are things that are dumb or made up on the fly, the film keeps coming up with dazzling set pieces that I’m not taken out of the action or overall enjoyment. I am a little worried Fast 7, which is set to be released next summer (not that I don't want to see it immediately after that ending), may be rushed. The mid credits scene sets up what should be another amazing genre film.  One that hopefully will continue the upswing of the least likely franchise to win me over that actually did.  Quite impressive for popcorn.

Grade: B+