Fast & Furious 6

Thanks for joining me once again as I march through the Fast and Furious films in anticipation of the next release in the franchise, Hobbes & Shaw. We are not here to talk about that film coming August 9th of this year, instead we are here to revisit 2013’s Fast & Furious 6 (trailer. I vividly remember seeing this in the theater with friends and taking in yet another ridiculously over-the-top action installment of the series that Fast Five steered the direction of the brand in. I will never forget friends instantly dismissing the outrageous nature of the stunts in disbelief coming out of the theater, but upon re-watching it this week I only learned to embrace its style of unbelievable.

FF6 kicks off a few months after Fast Five where Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) gets back home in Spain just in time for Mia (Jordana Brewster) to deliver their first child. Not all is sunshine and rainbows however as they soon receive a visit from Dom (Vin Diesel) who informs them of the news he just got from special forces agent Hobbes (The Rock) that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is still alive and now running with the equivalent of a doppelganger car heist crew that left a tornado of chaos in their dust in Russia. Hobbes wants Dom to reassemble their team to take them down. Why not bring in the feds one may ask? Because Hobbes wants ‘the best’ to take down this new car gang heist and the feds simply do not stack up to the Dom’s crew! Dom is more than willing to reunite his team in the spirit of FF clichés such as ‘family’ and ‘ride or die.’ A great scene then transpires where the rest of the crew is tracked down and brought back together with Roman (Tyrese), Gisele (Gal Gadot), Han (Sung Kan) and Tej (Ludacris) all more just as eager to suit up again with Dom & Brian.

Oh yeah, since Han is still riding with the crew, that means FF6 is set before the events of 2006’s Tokyo Drift. I will give director Justin Lin credit for doing his best to avoid all shots of smartphones since they were not around in 2006. I cannot vouch for any of the luxurious cars in the film not matching with the timeline since I am not a gearhead by any means. Although the villain car gang does make use of a car hacking device that seems several years ahead of its time and more fitting in a futuristic Watchdogs-esque setting, but who am I to know. Speaking of the villain gang, FF6 does a worthy job of establishing them as formidable foes for Dom’s crew. Other than each of the lesser goons getting a quick standout action scene or two (with an awesome one being Joe Taslim showing off his The Raid chops in a killer fight with Roman & Han), there is not a lot of time devoted to establish the entire antagonist gang. The exception to this is their leader Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) who FF6 clearly gets across is constantly one step ahead of Dom’s gang. One of my favorite scenes is when Dom & Owen have a calm before the storm face-to-face ala Heat before the final act of nonstop action gets underway and after their war of words I could not wait for them to tear each other’s gang apart in a way only this franchise is capable of.

As mentioned in the previous entry, by this point in the franchise it is all about a big heist and explosive action and no longer focusing on street races. There is one nice little street race between Dom & Letty that culminates in the two having their own Lethal Weapon 3 moment, but the final hour’s worth of action is what I will mostly remember FF6 for. The final hour has two huge action scenes with a brief breather in-between them. The first scene is Dom’s gang trying their best to prevent Shaw’s crew in heisting a military convoy that leads to YEAH RIGHT RIDICULOUS STUNTS transpiring on a civilian highway with countless cars getting taken out amidst the glorious mayhem the dueling crews unleash on each other. Re-watching them again six years later still lit me up and if you are on board with the craziness of the Fast and Furious brand at this point you will likely have a similar ‘hell yeah, keep it coming’ reaction, or if you are opposed to their over-the-top style brand of stunts you will shake your head in disbelief like some friends of mine at the theater did. I completely understand both sides of the fence on this one, but as you can tell I am in the former camp and absolutely love this. The second half features the infamous ‘infinite airline runway of doom’ where the two camps wage war on a mammoth Russian Fuselage with even more ridiculous stunts and fights. On the fuselage everyone makes their last stand including a surprisingly capable pasty goon and a four person brawl between the four biggest meatheads of the series that culminates in the best headbutt in cinematic history since The Garbage Picking, Field Goal Kicking, Philadelphia Phenomenon!

If you have been keeping up with the rest of my Fast and Furious entries so far, you will know I watched this with the commentary track from the staff of giantbomb.com. Like their previous commentaries, their staff consists of a FF newbie seeing the films for the first time, a diehard fan of the franchise, and an inbetween casual fan. They all combine for memorable reactions to the outrageous stunts, surprise cameos, the aforementioned four person meathead brawl that only enhanced my re-watch of the film. The commentary highlight is one Alex Navarro’s real time mile countdown of how long the runway is in the film. After I finished my Giant Bomb commentary track viewing, I re-watched the second half of FF6 with the BluRay’s commentary from director Justin Lin. Aside from a hair too many noticeable lulls, Lin provides his usual keen insight with some key takeaways for me being Lin addressing his ambitious stunts and fearing how they ‘jumped the shark’ with Dom’s leap stunt but having validation for it in test screenings and Lin breaking down the direction they went with the eye-opening post-credits scene.

Aside from the commentary there is additionally an hour and a half of bonus features. Most of them are well done and worth taking the time for. If I had to single out a few of the many features, Take Control is a nice over-arching 20 minute look on the film from most of the primary cast and crew. The Making of FF6 is a little more thorough near half hour take diving into the plot more and how they reunited the cast again. If you are into the stunts I highly recommend checking out the quick six minute Highway Heist feature where they reveal how the crew got exclusive first dibs to a newly finished highway in the Canary Islands before it was open to the public to film the highway action scene. Finally, Hand-to-Hand Fury is an in-depth nine minute take on the excellent fight choreography featured throughout.

I recall in the weeks succeeding the release of Fast and Furious 6 that a fair amount of fans and critics proclaimed the cast and crew somehow achieved the impossible and topped their efforts in the beloved Fast Five. For the longest time I would not hear it, as I still love Fast Five a ton (as you can tell by my entry right here), but upon revisiting Fast & Furious 6 all these years later I think I have to do a 180 and give the ever-so-tiny of a nudge in favor of the sixth film as my favorite in the series. It has more exhilarating stunts and action, the best overall cast, and higher-highs with some exclamation points that feel a smidge more punctuated than the fifth film. It all comes together as a terrific ending for director Justin Lin’s fourth and final film in the series as he ties it all together with a touching callback ending to the original film’s closing. I will close with if you have not seen FF6 yet, make sure to stay past the credits for the tag as it features a bonus scene that finally brings the franchise back to the present timeline with a killer surprise twist.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Avengers: Infinity War
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-6
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Days of Future Past