Once a film franchise gets to its sixth installment, it’s already started to feel less and less important to have in depth discussions about each new film. In a general sense you should already know what the movies have to offer, with the only real points of contention being where exactly this one ranks among the others, and what any new additions to the cast or the creative team did to change the formula. Seeing as Fast & Furious 6 is largely utilizing the same cast and crew as Fast Five, expectations should be that this one is largely in line with that one, and for the most part it is.
This time around though, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his team of street racing master thieves are being forced to team up with the burly authority figure (Dwayne Johnson) who they came up against and earned a begrudging respect for in the last film. And the reason they need to team up is that an even masterer master criminal (Luke Evans) has been pulling off some jobs that the authorities can’t handle on their own, and a member of his crew has a connection to an ex-member of Toretto’s. It just makes sense that everyone should come together in a destructive collision course.
The positives and the negatives of
Fast & Furious 6 are generally the same as the positives and negatives of
Fast Five. It’s fun to watch big guys like Diesel and Johnson flex their muscles and puff up their feathers when they get in the same room together, some of the action is hard-hitting and enjoyable, and there are a bevy of beautiful cars and beautiful girls to feast your eyes on—this is all to be expected. What’s also to be expected is that the script is bad, with the plot being nothing more than strained connective tissue patching together action sequences, and the dialogue being composed mostly of embarrassing schmaltz wherein the various characters lecture us about the meaning of “family” and how there’s nothing more important than “family.” Also, the usual
Fast & Furious pitfall of ramping the action up to too high a level in the third act is present as well. The laws of gravity are ignored to the point of annoyance, the limits of punishment a human body can endure are stretched to
Looney Tunes levels, and thus the film is eventually robbed of all weight and stakes, and things get boring. A chick fight between Gina Carona and Michelle Rodriguez that happens early on is pretty fun though, and the armored go-karts that can flip over cars are wicked. You’ve just got to ignore all the stilted acting and senseless plot twists to fully enjoy them, which will be too big a task for many.
