Fast & Furious 6

So it turns out I’ve already seen this one, I reviewed it on Letterboxd when it came out. Hand on heart I could not have told you this had I not just found my old review. It’s not on this website but it reads like so:

This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen in quite some time. I wasn’t going in expecting Citizen Kane but some more care over the dialogue would have been nice.

Ok bit harsh but I’ll stand by it, the script has never really been the forte of these films. Obviously I’ve watched 6 of these in a row now so it clearly isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve seen in some time. This time I did wonder if they were just having a joke at our expense, with lines like “How did you know there would be a car there to break our fall?”

Messrs Johnson and Diesel seem not to worry about delivery though, so perhaps the extra effort would be wasted.

Yeah also not taking this back.

That said, it’s not a total stinker and is in parts genuinely entertaining. I think at one point I saw a ‘Rock elbow’; sadly I couldn’t smell what he was cooking.

So pithy but I’m glad I liked something because this film does have its moments.

Not entertaining enough to make me want to see whatever fuckery they’ve got planned with Jason Statham, but there are worse ways to spend two hours.

I guess I was late to the party, because Fast Five¹ clearly was the one to watch (no evidence I have seen it until my recent review, although who knows…).

It’s interesting to see the Statham stuff in context, I probably didn’t know it was a scene from Tokyo Drift² that was being sort of re-jiggered to introduce a new character. And, finally, to show the death of Han again thereby presumably bringing the whole franchise back into chronological order. It’s so weird that episode 3 is set before episode 6, and for almost no good reason.

Anyway on what I suppose is my second viewing, I liked the scale of the stunts although they are slipping into far too much bombast and bluster with it all. It’s getting a bit heavy on CG effects rather than practical work, and the scene at the end stretches even my keen suspension of disbelief. The runway there must surely be 100 miles long for a 15 minute scene to take place on it at full take off speed.

This is still an entertaining film though, even though it’s lost some of the freewheeling sense of fun we saw in the last one. In the context of the other films the sense of camaraderie and kinship (drink every time someone says family) is more obvious. But it’s the kind of fun you enjoy to yourself with a pizza in a dark room, not the sort you show to your friends.