Fast & Furious 6

People often decry the overflow of sequels Hollywood offers up every time a movie’s a hit. And yet, Fast & Furious 6 brings the franchise past the point where most series would either end or be relegated to direct-to-video, and it’s getting pretty good reviews (as did its predecessor). Maybe at this point, critics just said “Screw it!” and abandoned their blockbuster snobbery to just enjoy the ride instead. Or maybe it’s because this series knows how to make a sequel right. That’s a good possibility. When you’re still going strong after six movies, you know you’ve got something that works.

After five movies of vehicular destruction, 6 finds street racers-turned-international thieves Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) retired and settled down to a peaceful life in exile from the U.S. They are pulled back into the world of (literal) highway robbery after being approached by DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), the antagonist from Fast Five, for help in catching another high speed heist crew headed by the evil Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). Dom and Brian reassemble all the series regulars to aid in Shaw’s capture, not only to receive pardons for all their past crimes, but also because of one member of Shaw’s team: Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), their former ally who supposedly died in the fourth film.

Plot or character development aren’t exactly the first things that come to mind with a movie like this, but the film does actually wrap up, or at least reference, some overreaching plotlines in the series. Having only seen the first and fifth installments, some of these were lost on me. But the film does an adequate enough job of filling viewers who haven’t followed the series closely in on the necessary plot points. And really, it’s not that hard to get the gist of it anyway, because all the cars are the real stars of the picture.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that, because the human cast is very good. Diesel brings a strong presence and deep-voiced, laconic charisma. The way he’s carried this series, it makes you wonder why he isn’t a leading man more often. Johnson, having first gained fame as wrestler The Rock, is a perfect action hero. Not only does he look the part with his physique, he also routinely showed on the mic in WWE that he can be very funny. He’s a little more subdued here, but he still plays off everyone around him very well. Much more of the comic relief comes from supporting players Sung Kang, Tyrese Gibson, and Chris Bridges (better known as rapper Ludacris).

But the vehicles are the major selling point of the movie (I should have said they aren’t the only stars). The expensive cars make for pleasing eye candy, whether in park or at high speed. But the series has moved on from just street races to bigger and better action sequences, so a tank and even a cargo jet come into play (the finale rivals the end of Die Hard 2 for the longest runway ever shown on film). Ridiculous? Over the top? Antithetical to the laws of physics, gravity, or endurance of the human body? Yeses all around. And too much fun to care. It’s not quite as all-out crazy fun as Fast Five was two years ago, but it’s pretty close.

I wasn’t a fan of the first entry, 2001’s The Fast and the Furious (too much talk about cars and not enough chases and explosions for my then-eleven-year-old tastes). But somewhere along the way, the series found just the right formula of fast cars, explosions, and humor (not to mention some PG-level sex appeal for the teens and preteens in the audience) that even after a growing number of movies (and the film sets up a seventh installment, coming out next year), it  remains highly enjoyable. It’s like the Lethal Weapon series of the 21^st Century.