Furious 6 [2013]

(Yeah, the official title is "Fast & Furious 6", but I prefer the on-screen "Furious 6".)


I hadn't seen any of this franchise's movies before '11, but the rhapsodic Fast Five reviews led me to rent it, and I very much enjoyed it, so today I made it out to Numero Seis.

Alas, Fast Five this ain't.

For starters, this is one dark movie. Visually speaking, that is. Two of the three major action sequences take place at night, in underlit streets and an isolated area, and that just isn't very much fun. There's also far too much quick-cutting and super close-ups during brawls and chases alike, so boo on that.

Second, the plot (and yes, plot is important even in this sort of flick) is totally meh. Something about stopping a baddie from stealing a microchip that could wreak havoc on an entire nation's communications network. (Just how it would do this is not explained or even handwaved.) And, because there are so few bad-guy ideologies left in the world, we get yet another standard-issue "the villain is really just an utterly immoral freelancer, who'll sell the WMD to the real creeps" plot. Yawn. Worse still, our heroes start off fabulously wealthy, and their quest to rescue Michelle Rodriguez isn't nearly as interesting as their rags-to-riches heist plot of Five. If her character was interesting before, she certainly isn't here.

Third, the locations are pretty drab. We trade in the favelas and balmy streets of Rio for a few Mediterranean cameos, but mostly a London and isolated military base setting. London is of course a wonderful city, but it isn't nearly as good a fit for the heavily Latin/outlaw Furious flavor. We get two big chases through magically under-populated streets at night, but neither is very compelling, and the drag race party scene is culturally absurd even by this franchise's standards.

Fourth and most important, though, the villain is seriously weak sauce, a completely generic Eloquent and Civil Yet Dastardly Brit. His driving motivation? "Efficiency". Snore. Five's cartel baron was far more hiss-able, and The Rock made for a great grudging pursuer. Here, The Rock plays the Da Chief part, which isn't nearly as interesting. And he does something late in the movie that should make him one of the fugitives permanently, but doesn't.

Also, Gina Carano fails to make much of an impression. And despite being in the F5 end credits bonus, Eva Mendes is absent.

Did I like anything about the movie? Sure: the cast is fun to watch, there's some great dubiously-intentional laughs, and the end-credits scene makes me look forward to the seventh outing. It plods in the middle and towards the end - the final action sequence is kinda dry toast - but it never quite becomes boring.

All in all, whereas Five was definitely worth a ticket, this is definitely worth a rental. Here's hoping the new villain gets to shine, the locations become exotic and sun-soaked again, and Michelle gets to play a lot more fun and less blank/confused next time.

C+



For the record, here's g1's review from the F5 thread:

g1orkatsos said:

I just saw Fast and Furious 6.
It is stupid, over the top, ridiculous, filled with craziness, goofy and with no real understanding of physics and gravity whatsoever.
And i enjoyed the shit out of it. Loved it.
If you liked Fast 5 and that style for the franchise, i highly recommend it. You will have a blast watching it.
Also there is an awesome after credits scene! Be sure to see that too.

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... And while I'm only very rarely a rap fan, I did rather dig the movie's good-times rebels' theme:

Saw this one with my son. He is a big fan of the series. (he is 15) for me, this was the first of the series I have seen. It was OK, but the action was the typical 21st century over-the-top, physics defying stuff we have to put up with now. And of course the heroes and villans can fight, shoot and drive better than any real human who ever lived.

That's not to say I completely hated it. I watched Tokyo Drift a few days later and it was just OK also. Seemed like the characters were totally unrelated except the Asian dude who was in both. My son thinks the kid who was in TD will be in FF7.

An additional thought: this movie is based around Dom; problem is, however, nothing about Dom in this movie suggests an interesting character. He was much better in Five, where the main plot focus was on the safety and future well-being of his sister, her baby, and O'Connor, and he led the team mainly to help the three of them. In 6, however, everything revolves around him chasing a character who is quite literally a blank. (Much like himself!, you say, and believe me, I hear you. )


Random fan-editing thought: the entire final action extravaganza could be removed, skipping straight to the epilogue, and lose pretty much nothing.

Gaith said:

Random fan-editing thought: the entire final action extravaganza could be removed, skipping straight to the epilogue, and lose pretty much nothing.

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Not really. you would loose
Plus the last action piece is incredibly stupidly awesome!

I saw it a couple of weeks ago. It's not Fast Five, but it's real good fun.

Gaith said:

Random fan-editing thought: the entire final action extravaganza could be removed, skipping straight to the epilogue, and lose pretty much nothing.

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Yeah but then you'd miss out on seeing the world's longest runway. I figure that sucker would have had to have been 30 miles long.

gaith said:

random fan-editing thought: The entire movie could be removed, and lose pretty much nothing.

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ftfy

^ Opening credits recap sequence aside, I agree. Not terrible, but definitely meh.

Well, I just caught the wonderfully named 2 Fast 2 Furious (I still haven't seen the original in full), and hey, it's a lot of fun - more so (and better overall) than Furious 6, but not as good as Five, of course.

Edit: I'm not at all a gun fetishist, but moar Eva Mendes with a shotgun in Seven Fastious, please:

I'm team tokyo drift. I liked it for what it was a straight up (well OTT in places) racing film with none of the heists and whatnot. But they felt the need to Reboot the franchise sort of with Fast & Furious (ff4.) In fact the only film in the franchise I really hated was the first, as it was just point break with cars.

I enjoyed watching (Fast &) Furious 6 on the big screen, but it is definitely a step down from Fast 5. I also wasn't terribly happy that they killed off the interesting couple but left Mia Toretto unscathed. Hopefully, with Part 7 we'll get a more solid storyline and a far more interesting villain in Jason Statham.

Watched the dvd last night and found it to be high octane, leave your brain at the door, fun.

That said, how many innocent people were casually murdered during the tank chase?

And exactly how long was that runway? 10, 20, 50 miles long???? lol.

Like I said, brainless fun. Michael Bay would be proud.

Now I still have not watched FF1-4, so what is the constant references to Tokyo? Is Tokyo Drift a significant chapter in the series?

^ It's more of a real world-POV in-joke. Of the first movie's cast, Tokyo Drift, the first F&F movie by Justin Lin, only features a Diesel cameo at the very end; it also both introduces* and kills off Han. Lin then went on to make movies 4-6... all of which have featured Han. Ergo, movies 4-6 are prequels to Tokyo Drift, and people have been wondering when the O'Connor/Torretto storyline would finally catch up with that movie. The end credits tag to Furious 6 establishes that Han was killed in Tokyo Drift as revenge for the events of 6, and assures the audience that by the end of Seven Fastious, the series will finally be all caught up and moving into an uncharted future once again.

Tokyo Drift is now the only F&F movie I haven't seen. I really do advise giving movies 1, 2, and 4 a try, in that order, now that you've seen Five. Of all the Fast movies I've seen, 6 is my least favorite. My ranking, from best to least, would be:

- Fast Five
- Tie: 2 Fast 2 Furious and Fast and Furious (4)
- The Fast and the Furious (1)
- Furious 6




* Sung Kang also played a Han in Justin Lin's indie flick Better Luck Tomorrow, which I haven't seen. Though not officially connected to the F&F series, its Han is considered to be the same guy.

I now consider myself F&F educated. ;-)

So did Stratham appear in Tokyo Drift, or is that a retro-con?

I guess I will have to do a marathon watch soon, since they are all now on Netflix.

Again, I haven't seen TD, but my understanding is it's a retcon - the crash and explosion where there, but no hint of murder. I could be wrong.

Statham was definitely new to 6, though, and a well-hidden surprise - there was some yelping when she showed up onscreen. :-D

Gaith said:

Of all the Fast movies I've seen, 6 is my least favorite. My ranking, from best to least, would be:

- Fast Five
- Tie: 2 Fast 2 Furious and Fast and Furious (4)
- The Fast and the Furious (1)
- Furious 6

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Wow! Really? I only saw 4 and 5 for the first time last year and didn't think much of them, although iirc I preferred 5 over 4. I haven't seen the first one since I bought it back in 2001, the second one since I bought it back in 2004, and third one since I bought it around 2007. When I saw Furious 6 last year though I thought it was the best one so far. Looks like I may have to do a marathon of all 6 to see if my memory was playing tricks on me. :lol:

To me, there's just so little at stake in 6. Brian and Mia are happy, they've got their kid, Dom's free and has a girl, and everyone's rich. I like Michelle as much as the next guy, but don't really care about Letty, and no one really cares about the actual mission, they just wanna get back to LA for some reason.

The four 1 though 5 movies, not including 3, feel like one big story with a great conclusion. I'm not saying there aren't more cool stories to tell, but 6 ain't it.

The Vevo version linked above is gone, but Universal Pictures UK, bless them, have not yet deleted this excellent version of the Furious 6 opening credits sequence, without said credits, which does not appear to feature on any F&F home release. Catch it while you still can!




As for 6, I agree with pretty much all of these criticisms. It's not a terrible movie, and it is watchable, but its only reason for existing in-universe is to bring Michelle Rodriguez's character back and set up Furious 7, which I hope will be an improvement:

And of course the heroes and villans can fight, shoot and drive better than any real human who ever lived.