Lunacy is the name of the game for the Fast & Furious franchise. It always has been and it always will be. Fast & Furious 6 rises to new incongruous, downright bizarre heights—more endless explosions, more tracking shots of women’s behinds, more dour drama, and more car chases. More is good, except when it’s not. Justin Lin may have the aforementioned qualities, but what Fast & Furious 6 lacks is purpose.
The end of Fast Five showed our rambunctious crew of criminals finally settling down after a heist that awarded them millions of dollars. Alas, we knew, for the sake of this franchise making more and more money, normalcy wouldn’t continue.
In Fast & Furious 6, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) reassemble their crew for one last job that – if pulled off successfully – will grant each of them pardons from the United States government. Hobbs (the Diplomatic Security Service agent from the last film played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) offers this deal to finally get back home to Detroit.
This will be no easy task. With this sixth film also comes the most menacing and domineering villain we’ve seen to date. The mission? Take down the nihilistic mastermind who goes by the name of Shaw (Luke Evans) – a British man who seemingly controls just about everyone (from his group of mercenary drivers to the police to government leaders).
There’s one more element thrown into mix here: Dom’s ex-lover Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who ostensibly died a few movies back, is alive and has joined forces with Shaw. After the accident, she suffered from retrograde amnesia, unable to remember who she is, where she came from, and whom she loved.
The proceedings are injected with the typical propulsive action we’ve come expect from this franchise. The talented crew (of which all the originals members have returned, from Ludicrous’ whip smart mechanic to Han to the joke-cracking Roman) speed through the streets of London in pursuit of Shaw with their stylish cars and less-than-witty one-liners. Alas, something’s missing. Fast & Furious 6 isn’t imbued with the same sort of jocular and daring spirit we saw in Fast Five. Lin’s 2011 opus was joyful, colorful, and creative. Characters made sarcastic quips while recklessly driving through the streets of Brazil, stealing money and breaking an inordinate amount of laws. Even when the stakes were high though, the proceedings felt playful.
Not this time around. Aside from a brief excursion that involves a luxurious car flying full-speed out the front of a plane (yes, that actually happens), the action sequences are more uninspired than ever. Fast and Furious 6 is a film that jaggedly oscillates between action absurdity and familial drama. The central theme of the movie, staying committed to those closest to you at all costs, juxtaposed against the fantastical fiction of the action, lacks cadence and coherency.
Unfortunately, Fast & Furious 6 is flawed by design: it’s a film that desperately wants you to empathize with Dom’s plight to reconnect with Letty, while almost exclusively operating outside the parameters of reality. The action – which is the bulk of this film – doesn’t even attempt to adhere to basic laws of physics. And that’s fine. However, Lin and company forgets to establish mood and tone. Fast & Furious 6 is not a film that exists in the same world we do. The quicker the artist behind the helm understands that concept, the sooner we’ll receive an entirely satisfying Fast & Furious movie – one not plagued by terribly over-wrought drama.
After 130 minutes, Fast & Furious 6 failed to give me a reason to care about its characters. Cars ceaselessly flip over, lives are lost, bonds are broken, and a whole lot of stuff blows up. I use the word stuff quite purposefully as it adequately reflects the amorphous nature of Lin’s latest (and hopefully last) entry into a series that has remarkably been elongated into six (the slight exception being Fast Five) uniformly mediocre movies.
