I always wrote off this series as just a bunch of crappy movies that made money because for some reason people are fascinated by Vin Diesel, who has always struck me as a mediocre action star and awful actor. I've never understood the appeal of guys like him or Jason Statham. I totally see it in guys like Antonio Banderas and Duane Johnson, who have the sort of charisma an action star needs, but I feel like all Diesel and Statham bring to the table is their low, barely intelligible, gravely voices and not much else. But apparently something strange happened around the fifth entry in this series that has led to these movies actually getting good reviews.
so I checked out Fast and Furious 6, and just to get the negatives out of the way - some of the dialog is just plain terrible and a lot of the humor seems aimed at the lowest possible common denominator. You can see so many of these punch lines coming a mile away and the way these characters talk sometimes is like how high school kids must think cool people talk. On the plus side, it certainly delivers in the one area I expect a movie like this to, and that's the amazing driving scenes. Bad ass looking cars, adrenaline pumping music, and lots of awesome stunts not dependent on CGI. There's some crazy stuff happening in some of those scenes. A lot of it is over the top and crazy, but never really goes overboard to the point where I'm like, "Okay this is fucking ridiculous". Well, actually I take that back, there is one god awful moment that made me roll my eyes by how stupid it was
The cast sure is pretty, and some of them have some good onscreen charisma, particularly Duane Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock) and the main villain. Others though, are boring as fuck and feel like a waste of screen time (i.e. Vin Diesel and Gina Carano). And Roman is fucking annoying. He's the token black dude who always has to make jokes or one liners, and most of them suck. The hacker black dude is a much better character and doesn't feel like such a bad stereotype. I also like Han, who feels more like a real person than most of the characters.
There's some decent non-vehicular action in the movie, but it all feels tame after watching The Raid 2, but it's hard for any movie to really top the martial arts in that movie. It's pretty much the new standard. Still, it's nice to get a little diversity in Furious Six, but the movie is clearly at its best when people are behind the wheel and cool shit is happening
So I guess I enjoyed the movie, mostly for the the cool vehicle stunts, and the bad ass that is The Rock (who has ten times more charisma than Vin Diesel). I also liked the idea of the team going up against, as one character puts it, their "evil twins." in this rival team of criminal racers. I always like it when characters in a story go up against what is essentially their evil counterparts(like Star Fox vs Star Wolf, Buffy vs Faith, Xena vs Callisto, Darkwing vs Negaduck, etc.). Sadly, the movie doesn't do as much with this as it could, but it's still sort of cool. Beyond that though, it's pretty much what you expect from a dumb Hollywood blockbuster - pretty people trying way to hard to sound cool and failing about fifty percent of the time, low brow humor (look! They made that guy have to take his cloths off HAHAHAHAHAH
), and a rather nonsensical plot. The movie's not high art or anything, but seeing a fucking tank smash a bunch of cars is pretty bad ass and so is the like 20 or 30 minute climax of the movie, which is a pretty damn awesome action sequence that I plan on watching again.I'm not sure why these movies seem to be getting better reviews though, as I thought most critics would not forgive how bad everything other than the movie's driving scenes are. Either they are lowering their standards or I'm just missing something, because take away the jaw dropping car chases and stunts and you have a fairly mediocre movie.
EDIT: Just a random thought, has Michelle Rodriguez ever been in a movie where she's not playing the exact same character? And for that matter, she always feels like the cheap, B option for "bad ass chick tomboy". I'd rather pay the extra cash for an Angelina Jolie or Scarlet Johanssen personally. Just saying.
Now all I need is the rest of the miyazaki movies, wouldn't mind watching spirited away, again once I find it...
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