Furious 7

The Quick and Dirties: 3 Days to Kill, Non-Stop, Brick Mansions

R. I. P. Paul Walker

On Friday, I used this space to say a few words about the passing of Nelson Mandela. A few days earlier, as you are probably aware, actor Paul Walker died in an auto accident. A tragic irony, if ever there was one. Regrettably, I didn't say anything here. Now that I have said something about Mandela, I feel bad for not doing so about Walker.

The fact that he was not a world leader does not make his death any less tragic than Mandela's. In fact, his popularity may make it just as impactful on the kids who see his movies. For them it should be a cautionary tale. They know who he is and can more readily identify with him. As important a person as Mandela is to the history of the world, many under thirty view him as something from their history books. To these people, he is important because that is what they have been told that. Walker is of this time. He became what they aspire to.

The one thing I hope does not come out of Walker's passing is what I read in one article over the weekend. It theorized that what happened to him may help romanticize street racing. Yes, I understand he was not racing at the time, but it is what has become associated with the man. We don't need a bunch of knuckleheads putting their petals to the metal. Leave that on the screen.

Speaking of the screen, I admit, the prospect of watching another Fast & Furious, or even the old ones, seems like it could be morbid entertainment. Still, I'm curious to see what the powers that be cook up for the next installment if the show does indeed go on. It's an odd series in that it actually hit its stride in the fifth movie. It can be argued that parts five and six are the best in the franchise. Click here and here to read my reviews of both of those movies.

Fast & Furious 6

Directed by Justin Lin.

2013. Rated PG-13, 130 minutes.

Cast:

Vin Diesel

Paul Walker

Dwayne Johnson

Michelle Rodriguez

Jordana Brewster

Tyrese Gibson

Sung Kang

Ludacris

Luke Evans

Gal Gadot

Elsa Pataky

Gina Carano

At the end of Fast Five we were teased with the most soap operish of endings. One of our favorite characters, Letty (Rodriguez), was coming back from the dead for the next installment. And so, here we are. Our wait to see how her return plays out is over. The setup shows our heroes living high off the hog in exotic locales around the globe thanks to the money they made dragging a vault through the streets of Rio. Dom (Diesel) has something else he picked up while there: Elena (Pataky), the hot Brazilian cop who just couldn’t resist the Diesel engine. What? Too much? Anyhoo, Agent Hobbs (Johnson) shows up to fill Dom in on the fact that his thought to be deceased girlfriend is alive and kicking. The catch is she’s working for the newest bad guy, Owen Shaw (Evans), whom Hobbs is currently pursuing. With no hesitation, Dom rounds up the rest of the crew in London where all the madness is going down so they can get fast and furious. Six. Okay, that’s corny. You try. No? Let’s move on.

Like many an action movie, this one is at its worst when trying to explain itself. In other words, we don’t care one iota why Shaw is being such a dick, for lack of a better word. We sort of care about Letty’s situation. In true daytime drama fashion, she has amnesia. Let me back up a step. We actually don’t care about that either. We’re really just counting down the minutes until she figures out which team she’s supposed to be on. We’re also eye-balling part six’s buff female cop Riley, played by MMA fighter (and star of Haywire) Gina Carano and giddily awaiting the inevitable cat-fight between the two.

Two, my friends, is the magic number. That’s how many times our leading ladies square off. So good. So so good. I peek to make sure my wife isn't reading along as I type this. Aaaaannndd…the coast is clear. Anyhoo, that unabashed appeal to the shallow thirteen year old within us all has always been what works for this franchise. With Fast Five, the effort shifted into overdrive and never let up. FF6 travels the same road, but its pit stops are a tad longer. Otherwise, its commitment to the ridiculous is gloriously intact. We get more Dwayne Johnson being The Rock, more Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson trading insults. In fact, Tyrese is almost strictly comic relief. We also get more Paul Walker doing whatever Vin Diesel tells him to but somehow thinking he’s in charge and more of Sung Kang and Gal Gadot making googly eyes at each other. More than any of that, we get more crazy stunts involving not only cars, but a tank and a plane speeding down a runway that must be 50 miles long. And I’m not even joking a little bit about that last part.

Let’s back up to the cars for a moment. Know that I’m weeping on the inside as you read this because I’ll probably never have one. Our first real action scene involves something amazing. That something is not one, but two – yes, the magical two – two armored formula one racing cars. Sigh. May we please have a moment of silence for the untimely demise of all my other vehicular fantasies.

Thank you.

At the end of it all we get another really fun, but really dumb movie that is near impossible to resist. Sure, the dialogue is cheesy, the story is thin, and people act more out of convenience to the flimsy plot than anything remotely plausible. However, there’s an art to making watchable crap. It took a few movies to get it right, but these people have mastered it. How else to explain my total lack of disdain for the spectacular bridge stunt between Diesel and Rodriguez that makes the bridge scene in Fast Five feel somewhat realistic? And yes, we get another major promise (and closing of a loophole) right at the end. FF6 isn’t quite as good, or as terrible, as its predecessor, but it’s still so bad it’sawesome!

MY SCORE: -10/10

Fast Five

Directed by Justin Lin.
2011. Rated PG-13, 130 minutes.
Cast:
Vin Diesel
Paul Walker
Jordana Brewster
Dwayne Johnson
Tyrese Gibson
Ludacris
Elsa Pataky
Matt Schultze
Sung Kang
Gal Gadot
Joaquim de Almeida

Right away Fast Five lets us know what type of movie we’re in for. One of our heroes, Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Since it would be a waste to have one of our stars sitting in a cell for two hours, this calls for a daring escape attempt. As Toretto is being transported to prison on a bus with a bunch of other inmates, Brian (Walker) and his girlfriend/Dominic’s sister Mia (Brewster) show up right on cue to rescue their guy from the clutches of the law. Basically, their plan is to use their supped up sports cars to cause the bus to flip about half a dozen times, pull Dom from the wreckage and speed off. Huh? We couldn’t come up with a better idea than hoping everyone on board doesn’t die when we try to kill them? When you see the bus tumble you just know there have to be massive fatalities. Yet, the new anchor reporting the spectacular event informs us, “Amazingly, no one was killed.” Toretto and pals ride off into the sunset. Cue opening credits. This is your chance to make a break for it. Leave now, and spare yourself two hours of pure retardedness. Or, sit and enjoy the unrelenting display. Having plunked down twenty bucks on a Mother’s Day treat for the wife, I chose the latter. Yes, she picked the movie. Why? Are you kidding? Vin Diesel and The Rock in one flick? She couldn’t possibly resist that much man in one place at one time. I can’t blame her.

Speaking of The Rock, he plays the federal agent tasked with hunting down our favorite fugitives from the law and rocking a cool goatee. He’s sort of like Tommy Lee Jones’s character in The Fugitive, only with the ability to lift my Ford Explorer and that goatee. I may be exaggerating, but that thing is so cool it should’ve been listed in the credits as a separate character. Anyhoo, he and his crew have tracked our heroes down to Rio de Janeiro.

In need of money, Brian meets up with old pal Vince (Schultze) from the original The Fast and the Furious and decides to help him out on a train robbery. Yup, a train robbery. Of course, they’re stealing cars off of this train. Don’t you know what movie we’re watching? Predictably, things don’t go quite as planned. In fact, they go craptacularly wrong. They wind up with a car that the most evil and powerful man in all of Rio wants very badly. This basically means he tries to kill them to get his hands on the thing. To solve this problem our crew, who still have no money since they haven’t been paid for the botched job, launch an operation that looks to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million. This includes calling up people from other F and F movies and getting them down to Rio. It’s like they had a movie budget stashed away, or something. Not to mention, they have to deal with The Goatee catching up with them every so often and trying to drag them back to the US to face multiple charges.

As expected, we eventually get a knock-down, drag out fight between The Goatee and Vin Diesel. According to everything I’ve read on the internet, the combination of the ridiculous amounts of testosterone and machismo possessed by these two men should’ve resulted in a mix so volatile the universe would instantaneously implode once the first punch landed. Only those of lucky enough to be hiding in Chuck Norris’s beard would be safe. Luckily, we survived this potentially cataclysmic event to get to what is perhaps the most supercalifragilisticexpealidopeycoolstupid chase of all time. I’ll just say that, in terms of realism, I’m not sure if its more or less so than the A-Team trying to fly a tank in their movie.

I can’t blame anyone who hates this movie. The dialogue of the main characters is largely made up of them barking at one another. The supporting cast does provide some humor. Story-wise, there are so many gaping plotholes I accidentally dropped my over-priced tub of popcorn into one. They even create a plothole on the way out of theater. When the end credits roll, stick around through the end of the first song and see what the next F and F will be about. Will they call that one Fast Six? What about the series chronology? If Tokyo Drift has yet to happen yet, like they keep telling us, how exactly does our crew know Han? This gives us the best in-joke of the movie. Brian and Mia often talk about going Tokyo after pulling off the big job they’re working on because they don’t have extradition. When Han is asked about Tokyo, he says “We’ll get there, eventually.” How bad is TD that the rest of the franchise keeps distancing itself from it?

Let’s get back to this particular installment. As I said, there’s lots of yelling. There is also plenty of gunfire, fighting and of course, cars doing things I don’t think cars can do. Lest you get the wrong idea, I loved every single minute of this crap. It’s so bad, it’s awesome!

MY SCORE: -10/10

Takers