Saturday, May 25, 2013

No need for speed

Film: Fast and Furious 6

Director: Justin Lin


Sixth in the series of a franchise that sells thrills, Fast and Furious 6 has a tagline that reads 'All roads lead here'. To an average cinema viewer, that would mean if you haven't watched all the previous editions, you might miss a few finer nuances in the narrative. But that isn't the case with this Justin Lin film. Not only is it alright to have not watched the redundant prequels, it is perfectly fine if you missed this one too.


Nonetheless, the film brings together partners in crime, Dom and Brian (Diesel and Walker), and a few other familiar faces as Hobbs, (Dwayne Johnson) recruits them and a couple of new additions to create a task force for a mission. A criminal mastermind (Luke Evans) is after a computer chip that could render a nation defenceless and Hobbs' team has to stop him. The film then uses tried and tested Hollywood formulas as it gloriously goes from one outrageous action sequence to another.

What puts you off are the seemingly surreal elements in the film. A character, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Manmohan Desai-esquely returns from the dead with no recollection of her past life. In the second half, a sequence where the good guys use a car to anchor a tank and a scene where Vin Diesel does an impossible jump to save his love from falling off a bridge; come really close to reminding you of how a bullet that passed through Mithun's skull cured his brain tumor. The over-sized, testosterone ridden, chauvinist film wreaks with Hollywood's arrogance. The star-studded line up and relentless quest for physical superiority just gets too uninteresting to watch. A few one-liners produce short-lived laughter between scenes that have a lot of cars toppling over and crashing into things.

Even if this is the first film you watch in your life, or the first time you see fast cars in your life, or the first time you see an explosion in your life, you won't like the film. With visual spectacles that don't stun you after a point, with characters that you don't even care for by the end of it and with action that brings nothing exciting to the table, Fast and Furious 6 is not worth the effort nor the money it took to make it. And as if that weren't enough, the film pokes you once again towards the end suggesting at least one more sequel in the future. Until then, drive safe.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Published in DNA (Pune) on May 25, 2013

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