My how far have we’ve come from what started as the relatively simple premise of Vin Diesel playing a car thief who loves illegal street racing. It’s almost laughable to imagine there was once a time when Fast & Furious could be considered vaguely plausible. Now it’s well up to the the sixth installment.
Good car thieves are being mobilized by the US government to do battle with evil car thieves (terrorists, mind you) with their own awesome cars, before a dangerous (most assuredly fictional) device destroys the Earth, or knocks out the power grid, or enslaves the free world or something. But it’ll most assuredly make the world seriously uncool for cars. This is where our “heroes” come in.
Here’s the crazy thing: Fast & Furious may very well be the only franchise ever to accomplish the feat of getting stupider with each installment while actually getting better. It’s a dizzying paradox and damn if I can explain it, but by embracing the inherent silliness of one-track-mind obsessions (cars and women), and then blowing them up far past the point of being absurd, Fast 6 just gets more and more stunning.
I’m not spoiling anything by saying there’s a moment when cars are used to fight a tank. On a freeway. At 80 mph. The crazy bar has been picked up, and chucked well into orbit. If you’re a movie nerd looking for some good ham and cheese, or a gearhead for whom the words “subtly” sound like a swear word, or anywhere else in between, Fast 6 has something to offer.
Of course a silly film would still be a bad film if it didn’t have a cast with good chemistry. And one of the great things Fast 6 has going for it is that when its script begins to feel weak (which is very often), the cast has enough charisma to pull it through, and play off each other.
There are whole scenes (primarily the ones with Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson) which are gut-bustingly hilarious. Where in any other movie the pointless dialogue would derail the plot, the ad-libbed scenes turn out to be another of Fast 6’s strengths. Because when you’re not laughing at the one-liners, or marveling at fight scene after chase scene after fight scene (all of which are shot extremely well), the places where the film tries to inject some seriousness into the story with forced action movie clichés (kidnapped new wife, double crosses, fate of the world etc.) really make it drag.
Fast 6 is dumb, even offensively dumb at some points. It’s a crass, exploitative summer movie ride that gets by on the high octane thrills. But there’s an almost endearing charm that shines through it all; enough to make you grimly realize that yes, the idea of the already-planned sequel starring the guy from Transporter does sounds pretty cool.
