Fast & Furious 6 (2013) i Pubic Hair
Dir: Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Godot, Ludacris
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Law enforcement officials across North America were out in full force on the opening weekend of Fast & Furious 6, the latest instalment of the increasingly idiotic car chase franchise. The pigs' widely publicized goal was to keep eyes peeled for young copycat road warriors. This, I believe is further proof of civilization's decline. That youthful audience members are stupid enough to think they can match the make believe stunts on view in a movie must surely prove how many brain dead kids out are there inheriting the Earth. Another argument, I'd say, for strangulation at birth.
Look, I grew up in the heyday of great car chase pictures like Bullitt, The French Connection, The Seven Ups et al, but I never thought I'd be able to emulate behind-the-wheel exploits of Popeye Doyle. I can also assure you that if, by some stroke of the imagination Fast & Furious 6 had been released in those halcyon days, I - and most other action movie aficionados would have complained how awful the picture was. We might have forgiven the supposed plot, but never, ever would the sloppy filmmaking be applauded. Even the lowest drawer bottom feeding no-budget drive-in car chase picture during the 70s was better shot and edited than this noisy, overblown pacifier for testosterone-infused pinheads who require constant suckling at the teat of their Mamas.
This, of course, was in the days when the movies used real cars, real drivers and real crack-up mayhem and didn't rely on added CGI to pump up the action.
Rob Cohen's first instalment of the series, The Fast and the Furious, was certainly no cinematic ground breaker, but it was a reasonably well directed action thriller that featured a panoply of hunks, babes and hot metal on wheels. In fact the movie would have served very nicely as a one-off. Given that the movie was generated during the Decline, a one-off would never be enough. A sequel or two was idiotically inevitable and as such, each instalment got progressively worse - first with John ("I used to have something to say before I became a hack of the highest order") Singleton, then all the others by the supremely talentless Justin Lin.
Fast & Furious 6 finds our fast-riding heist pullers living in far flung corners of the Earth - out of reach from the law and extradition for their victimless crimes (they only steal from scumbags). When top cop Dwayne Johnson comes to them with news that a super elite group of car racing terrorists are wreaking havoc and appear to have Vin Diesel's old girlfriend in their clutches, there's much talk about "family" and how you don't abandon "family" in their time of need. In exchange for complete immunity from prosecution, our motley assortment of drivers engage in a dangerous mission to stop the terrorists and extract the supposedly brainwashed member of their crew.
This, of course, is the most implausible element of the movie. How can you brainwash a character that is brain dead? Then again, all the characters suffer from this affliction as do the audiences watching and enjoying the picture.
The movie quickly plunges into wall-to-wall action. None of it is well staged. Every set piece is a patchwork quilt of badly composed shots edited machine-gun style within an inch of their life and with no sense of geography. Especially heinous is that most of the cuts are driven by sound cues, not visual ones.
Today's audiences seem to love that style - or at least they've been pounded into submitting to it whether they like it or not. The movie just left me exhausted and depressed.
Suicide seems to be the only option after watching pictures like Fast & Furious 6. Either that or genocide for all those who patronize and/or - gulp - actually get a kick out of it.
"Fast & Furious 6" is in wide release from Universal.