'Fast & Furious 6' Movie Review: All Action, Thin Story, Plenty Of Fun

Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and the rest of the lovable misfits return in Fast & Furious 6, the latest installment in the iconic street racing franchise. It’s been twelve years since the original film – yes, it’s been that long— but what’s even more amazing is that while none of the sequels have any semblance of an intriguing plot, each movie has been better than the last. Back then, Paul Walker looked and acted like he was fresh out of high school, while I was about to begin a dreadfully mediocre middle school experience. Five movies and a college diploma later to put things in perspective, Walker and Diesel are still giving horribly robotic acting performances as Brian O’Connor and Dominic Toretto, respectively. Yet, this doesn’t matter so much since they can both drive the piss out of a car. And while the characters have gotten older, the action has become less grounded in reality, teetering on the edge of Michael Bay territory. With larger explosions and more death-defying acrobatics, the Furiverse defies any sort of logic in the movie world. After five films, shouldn’t Brian and Dominic be “too old for this s&%#” by now? And why am I still excited at the notion of another The Fast and the Furious movie?

In Fast and the Furious 6, Agent Hobbes (Johnson) entices Dominic and the rest of his crew to help him catch the international criminal Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), with the promise of amnesty for their previous crimes and the possibility of reuniting with the previously dead, but actually amnesiac, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). So Hobbes, Dominic and company chase Shaw in a series of high-speed pursuits to prevent Shaw from obtaining the components needed to create a Nightshade device that can disable the power in an entire region (Didn’t they already do this in NBC’s Revolution?). And with the slim chance that the audience can’t follow the already simplified plot, the movie spoon-feeds it to us. For example, in connecting a specific kind of gun to Letty, Dominic recites the type of bullet she uses, matches it to an incredibly unique gun and gives us the location of the man who sells that type of gun. In essence, you’re given the blueprint of what’s going to happen next, while director Justin Lin fills in the rest with high-octane car chase scenes.

Fast & Furious 6 knows its strengths and weaknesses, and by doing so it rarely even attempts to be more than just a summer blockbuster reliant on riveting action sequences. Dialogue is kept to a minimum because, aside from Dwayne Johnson, who is able to turn cheesy lines into somewhat respectable ones, the acting ranges from subpar to mediocre. The movie glosses over Dominic’s implied breakup with Fast Five flame Elena (Elsa Pataky) so quickly that I could barely register a “What?” thought before the story moved on. And the most character development shown could quite possibly be Hobbes’s regurgitation of new agent Riley’s resume. Fast & Furious 6 would have a better chance winning a Razzie than an Academy Award, but I could not care less.

In a sense, the Fast and the Furious franchise has turned into the film version of the much beloved Entourage in terms of fandom, success, and longevity. I wasn’t bothered by the amateurish acting because I was invested in what happened to Vincent Chase and the rest of the Queen’s Boulevard kids. The iconic moment when they found out that Aquaman beat Spiderman’s record at the box office is still fresh in my mind along with countless other fans of the show. Fast and the Furious 6 strikes that same nerve in a way that I still enjoy Dominic’s cheesy Zen Buddhist-like mannerisms or Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej’s (Chris Bridges) ability to fire off bad jokes in a J.R. Smith-fashion in the hopes of hitting a hot streak of funny gags. The $100 million heist in Fast Five may have been the franchise’s “Aquaman” moment, but unlike in Entourage, Fast & Furious 6 didn’t decline in quality. In fact, the franchise doesn’t seem to have peaked yet. The latest installment finally catches the rest of the series up with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift storyline in Han’s death (or is he dead?), setting up a potential monster 7^th movie with another marquee action star. And I. Can’t. Wait.

For more like this 'Fast & Furious 6' movie review, check out Uinterview's movie review section here.