JOE’s Fast & Furious 6 Review

It’s hard to see how Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and their merry band of illegal street-racing, bank-robbing, best buds can keep on getting even fastererer and furiouserer but, in their sixth film in the hugely successful Fast and Furious franchise, they’ve made a damn fine attempt at it.

By Eoghan Doherty

Following a surprisingly nostalgic recap of the previous five films over the opening credits, we catch up with Dom, Elena (Elsa Pataky), Brian and Mia (Jordanna Brewster) as they lead their new and supposedly settled multi-millionaire lives, safe from the prying eyes of all previous bad guys.

Everything’s perfect now, right? Wrong.

Ha! Had you there.

Needless to say, it would take something pretty big and pretty important to bring them all out of their self-imposed retirement. It turns out that the something pretty big is Agent Hobbs (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) and he turns up with the something pretty important – news that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), previously presumed dead, is actually alive, has amnesia now and has since teamed up with cool car-driving criminal mastermind, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans).

Promising pardons all round, Hobbs convinces Dom to get the band back together in order to take down Shaw and his own doppelgänger car gang before they can wreak havoc across Europe, with London their primary target. These negotiation scenes mostly involve a lot of huge folded biceps onscreen as the two giants go head to head in their talks.

What follows for the next two hours and ten minutes is essentially more-of-same for the Fast and Furious franchise, with massive quality action set-pieces, exciting night-time street racing, more plot holes than you could shake an oil-covered script at and lots of bikini-clad ladies. Although you’d think that with all those millions they’d made they’d be able to afford to buy them some more clothes really. They’re going to catch their sexy death of sexy cold dressed like that.

Oh, and Vin Diesel performs a flying headbutt on another human being. A FLYING VIN DIESEL HEADBUTT!!! AHHHHHH!!!!

We liked that bit as you can probably tell.

As far as this installment’s newcomers go, the stand-out is undoubtedly the always impressive Luke Evans as Shaw. In fact, Evans is one of the highlights of the film overall, absolutely nailing his psychotic and menacing I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-anyone bad guy, offering Dom mutual respect, but at the same time mocking him for his foolish loyalty to family and friends – in classic bad guy style.

Plus Evans gets to drive one of the coolest cars of the franchise yet, a ‘Flip-car’ that looks like the Batmobile got a Formula 1 car up the duff and does exactly what it says on the tin - flip other cars.

In contrast, the other Fast and Furious virgin (huh?) Gina Carano is unfortunately just not a good actress and clearly a little bit out of her depth – but we’re never going to say that to her face, are you?

Her one redeeming feature is that she can knock the sweet holy bejaysus out of other people really, really well and her definite highlight is a feisty womano-a-womano brawl in the London Underground with Michelle Rodriguez.

Ultimately though, this film belongs to the franchise’s original leads and the spectacular action they’re involved in. Essentially you could class this as a love story of how Dom and Letty find their way back to each other... albeit a love story that involves a a tank steam-rolling cars on a Spanish highway and a ridiculously bonkers airplane finale that just happens to conveniently take place on the world’s longest runway.

Take that Shakespeare!

It’s hard to see how they’ll top stunts like that in the future films, but we’re pretty sure that Fast and Furious 27 will see the the cast bareback ride a space shuttle through a black hole all while dressed in a chicken-suit and not wearing a seatbelt.

With decent direction from departing helmer Justin Lin, Fast & Furious 6 is exactly what the fans have been wating for. Lin, as well as acheiving a balancing act between the humour and action involved, has established a connection between each of the films in the series itself and, more importantly, a connection between the characters and fans. Regular viewers of the series will now have a sense of an overall arc and even nostalgia at times, something that’s rare for a big-budget action franchise.

Again, the inevitable plot holes rear their ugly head, such as the strange passing of time that seems to make no sense in the context of the film, as well as important story elements that are introduced at the start of the film but are then forgotten about until it’s convenient to nonsensically bring them back again right at the very end. And the most obvious plot hole of all? Why the jesu does Michelle Rodriguez not just spend 5 minutes looking into her forgotten past? I mean, all her info is right there on IMDB. Duh.

Fast & Furious 6, while definitley one of the better films in the franchise, isn’t quite up there with the best one yet, Rio-based Fast Five. Fans will be more than satisfied though and, in a series now known for its cliffhanger endings, this particular installment has got the cliffhanger cameo to top them all so make sure you stay right until the very end to witness it in all its glory.

The even better news for all you Fast and Furious fans out there is that Dom and the team will actually be returning to the big screen sooner than you think as they’ve already got release date for the seventh film in the series. So everyone reach into your glove compartment, pull out your sparkly ‘I Heart Paul Walker’ diary and put July 2014 in the diary now.

Interestingly, the rumours are that the next film in the franchise will be called Snow Fast and the Seven Furious.

Those rumours are unconfirmed though because we just made them up there now.