Furious 6 (2013)

aka Fast & Furious 6

2014 #106
Justin Lin | 125 mins | streaming (HD) | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 12 / PG-13

Fast Five’s kinda-villain, supercop Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), tracks down our band of car-driving criminal-heroes to inform Dom (Vin Diesel) that former girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who apparently died in the fourth film, is actually alive and working with a gang of super-criminals in London — which is Hobbs’ leverage to get Dom, Brian (Paul Walker) and the rest of the gang to come out of retirement to help catch said crims.

Cue two hours in which cars drive fast, people punch each other, and things blow up. Furious 6 (as it’s called on screen, to forcefully indicate a barely-existent “Part Two”-ness with the previous film) doesn’t ask much of you as a viewer, and doesn’t give you much back either — which is fair enough, in its own way. In other ways, it’s a disappointment.

The last film broke the diminishing-returns curve the franchise was on, but Furious 6 slots right back into it. It’s kinda tricky to pinpoint why Fast Five was so entertaining and this one isn’t. I think it just takes things too far. Firstly, the team-up novelty of the fifth film is now the series’ modus operandi, which makes it less special. Worse, there’s a muddled plot (Brian goes back to LA to meet someone in prison for no particularly good reason) and OTT action sequences. Five had the latter too — dragging a safe round the streets of Rio! — but 6 goes too far beyond. In transitioning from “street racing franchise” to “heist franchise (with cars)”, Fast & Furious has lost sight of its roots and become just another overblown action series.

For all the intent of this being “Part 2 of 2”, there’s a post-credits tease which sets up the next film’s villain: the brother of this film’s villain! So, what, this is “Part 2 of 3” now? Or, more likely, they’ve adopted the modern movie franchise format of a never-ending series of closely-connected narratives; essentially, a TV series, only with bigger budgets and just one instalment every other year. I suppose it doesn’t matter, but go too far down this route and you end up with films so engrossed in their own years-long mythology that your viewers forget why everything’s happening. Just look at the Saw movies, which had to start building “previously on”-style flashbacks into their editing. Let’s hope Fast & Furious doesn’t start requiring the same — to this point, at least, the primary story of each film has thankfully been established and resolved between the Universal logo and the credits scroll.

Also on the bright side, the action sequences aren’t over-CGI’d. There’s definitely some of that in play, most obviously during the climax (with its never-ending runway), but a lot of the car stunts throughout the film look to have been done for real. Always preferable. As for the Old Blighty setting, although the film does indulge in some tourists-will-recognise-this views of London, it’s not as bad as most Hollywood versions of the city — or British versions, if you look at the work of Richard Curtis & co. There’s plenty of backstreet, underground, grim-and-gritty bits on display here — entirely appropriate given the characters’ street-racing roots and criminal know-how. Still, these are little more than cosmetic bonuses.

Not the worst of the franchise, though certainly not the best, Furious 6 is an overcooked extravaganza that goes on at least one action sequence too long.

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2014. Read more here.