Review: FAST & FURIOUS 6

FAST & FURIOUS 6  (ACTION)
Two and a Half Stars out of Four
Directed by Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans, Gina Carano
PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality and language. 
Verdict:  FAST& FURIOUS 6 has, for better or worse, no bothersome brain to keep it down, throwing care to the wind as it returns to the "heist film" formula that made its predecessor a success, but amplifies everything to such a ridiculously bombastic, idiotic level, that one simply cannot resist grinning and settling in with the unparalleled level of explosive roadway mayhem.

FAST & FURIOUS is quite possibly the weirdest major franchise in Hollywood; not in the sense that the individual films are the weirdest (in that competition, it might be PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN), but in the sense of how the franchise has developed and evolved.  The one that started it all, THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001), was a glossy but grimy, watered-down exploitation flick about illegal street-racing in L.A.; violent, cheesy and unremarkable.  2 FAST 2 FURIOUS was a film as stupid as its title; more violent, more nasty and brimming with unintentional homo-eroticism.  The franchise bottomed-out with THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, which was the only film in the series to gross less than $200 million worldwide, and relegated main player Vin Diesel to a cameo, and Paul Walker didn't even appear.  But TOKYO DRIFT brought with it writer Chris Morgan and director Justin Lin, the team that would eventually revitalize the franchise.  The confusingly-titled FAST & FURIOUS (2009) brought Walker and Diesel back to their starring positions, and while critics dismissed the film, it became the highest-grossing film in the series up until that time.  Then FAST FIVE came and did something very weird; it received praise from a majority of critics and grossed over $600 million worldwide.  This is a series of exploitation schlock films, watered down to a teen-friendly PG-13 level, with its most loyal demographic in junior high-aged boys and the "wrong side of town" teenage boys, while glamorizing criminality, objectifying women and insulting intelligence.  But now it was a critical success and a major blockbuster property.  How'd that happen?  FAST FIVE embraced the stupidity head on, and also finding a way to focus their storylines which previously staggered through auto-based penis comparisons whilst colliding with cops and gangsters, but was now molded into a "heist film" storyline.  FAST & FURIOUS 6 plays similar tune, but this time, as Dominic Toretto's band of thieves pursue an organization of vehicular warriors with whom Dom's old flame is working.
FAST & FURIOUS 6 is dumb as hell, and possibly more dumb than any of the other FAST AND FURIOUS films, but it's also the most fun, even if sometime you find yourself laughing derisively.  While not many films dare to be as intelligent as, say, INCEPTION, similarly, not many films dare to be as outright stupid as FAST & FURIOUS 6.  A tank speeds along the highway, flattening cars in its path while firing shells at others; a car explodes out the nose a crashing jumbo jet in a burst of flame; a woman is thrown as a vehicle on which she was standing flips at at least 90 mph and a man driving 100+ mph the other direction leaps from his car, catches her in mid-air and then lands on another car, knocking the windshield, but the two get up, unfazed.  However, when a woman falls from a plane's wing while speeding on the seemingly-endless runway, she dies.  Go figure.  Ah, but it's fun.

"Of all the vacation spots, in all the towns, in all the world, you had to walk into mine."

I'll admit that it's a little frustrating to think that a large part of this film's target audience may possibly not be in on the joke, and the objectification of women in this series is very troublesome and not at all mitigated in this addition.  You can have women drive fast and beat the hell out of each other and talk tough, and even occasionally embarrass their male counterparts, but while they continue to be second-tier characters defined by a juvenile attitude about sexuality, the case can hardly be argued that they are strong female characters.

The spirit of entire series encapsulated in one still.

It's way too violent for pre-teen boys (not that that will stop their parents from taking them, so long as they close their eyes during the sexy bits), and far too dumb for most of anyone else, or at least, it should be too dumb.  In the right kind of movie, however, while intelligence is just about always a good thing, stupidity is not so damning as it might otherwise be.  The sixth chapter in a muscle-headed franchise doesn't exactly have much to prove, except to live up to a fluke of a moderately entertaining fifth chapter, so with an I.Q. of no more than 60, FAST & FURIOUS 6 moves at a breakneck pace while its heroes leaves a trail of destruction as bad as anything the villains they're trying to stop might be guilty of.  The laws of physics are given the finger, about 70% of the jokes land with a deafening thud, and seriously, you can't quite tell if you're smiling out of derision or out of the adolescent thrill of seeing World War III on the highways of Spain.
After a false ending, the full 130-minute run time of the film becomes a little taxing, and the family of homies
treacle that tattooed, flat-brim hat-wearing young males eat right up is embarrassing, but it's part of the deal you make when you go into this kind of movie.  In the end, it's a waste of time, but not a bad waste of time.