The Fast and the Furious 6 (2013)

The word empathy is derided from the Greek word empatheia, which literally translated means passion.  To empathise with something, thus feel passionately about it, you must identify with it on a personal level.  And I cannot empathise with shark jumping, I don’t care if it is well directed shark jumping.  Flying tanks, WMD and badly written espionage, what has become of this series?  I blogged about this a while back, when things get too stupid, they get boring.  It’s why Die Hard was so well received on original release, it effectively rebooted an entire genre that was sliding into parody with intimate and believable set pieces.  The original movie was no Die Hard, but the director knew when to say cut.  And he knew to make the cars part of the cast.  By now though, they’re probably talking about giving Toretto his own comic book deal.

I wish I had something to talk about here in terms of what this movie is about.  But there’s basically no point, there is no story.  It makes the original ‘Point Break’ (Great movie) riff look like Heat in comparison.  There is however, one partial saving grace.  I picked up on a spoiler earlier this year, the bad guy is Jason Statham’s kid brother.  So despite the story being shit, we can at least take solace in the fact that a) The guy is obviously going to get killed, and b) That this will eventually draw the extreme ire of Lee Christmas  And because by now, I find the cast of this series somewhat obnoxious, a villainous Statham might just be what the Dr. ordered, I’d like to see him shit on their parade to be honest.  Sure enough, Statham shows up post-credits and murders Sung Kang (the scene from Tokyo Drift).  The highlight of the movie and the removal of a seriously wooden actor.  Pity the movie offers nothing else though.

I wish I had something to talk about here in terms of what this movie is about.  But there’s basically no point, there is no story.  It makes the original ‘Point Break’ (Great movie) riff look like Heat in comparison.  There is however, one partial saving grace.  I picked up on a spoiler earlier this year, the bad guy is Jason Statham’s kid brother.  So despite the story being shit, we can at least take solace in the fact that a) The guy is obviously going to get killed, and b) That this will eventually draw the extreme ire of Lee Christmas  And because by now, I find the cast of this series somewhat obnoxious, a villainous Statham might just be what the Dr. ordered, I’d like to see him shit on their parade to be honest.  Sure enough, Statham shows up post-credits and murders Sung Kang (the scene from Tokyo Drift).  The highlight of the movie and the removal of a seriously wooden actor.  Pity the movie offers nothing else though.

Speaking of the cast though, aside from the hollow action sequences and garbage ‘plot’, there are too many cooks with this broth.  Now consider this, the biggest problem with the last movie was that there were too many actors jammed into it.  Around 10-12 people from the series history, in a 135 minute movie.  This movie suffers even worse.  It not only has too many regulars, it has now recalled Michelle Rodriguez, added Gina Carano and shortened the runtime by 15 minutes.  Obviously, it struggles to give so many actors relevant things to do.  If they aren’t reasonably occupied, I don’t care.  And I need to when the action isn’t gripping me which by the way, again, fails.  Toretto pulls moves in this movie that look like they belong in ‘Man of Steel’.  Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Rob Cohen said Bullitt was an influence on the original movie.  Sadly,with Lin the inspiration seems to be less French Connection, more Iron Man.  Fuck man, just send them into space and be done with it.  

6/10