#fast&furious6

[babyrowlet]

se non si lancia dalla macchina come Dom ha fatto per Letty per salvarla in Fast&Furious6, io non lo voglio

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I never feared death or dying I only fear never trying I am whatever I am only god can judge me now one shot everything rides on tonight even if I've got three strikes Imma go for it this moment we own it and I’m not to be played with because it can get dangerous see these people I ride with this moment we own it

[prettysmallreviews]

Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Although it never feels like it has quite as much room to breathe as its immediate predecessor, Fast & Furious 6 is still an incredibly dumb, fun movie. Coming off slightly overstuffed by trying a little too hard to prove there’s still gas in the tank, it can’t be said that it fails and even manages to raise stakes for the characters as well as finally tying the franchise together properly for continuity geeks.

Most Valuable Player: Gal Gadot shines in this movie. She doesn’t necessarily do much that she didn’t do in previous entries but her blunt demeanour really pays off after a few movies coming to appreciate her character and performance. Score: 4/5 impossible grapple gun shots

[lefkisne-blog]

Fast & Furious 6

Owen Shaw

Luke Evans

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Fast & Furious 6 avatars

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[annieloveeswag]

"You don't realize how much you appreciate something until someone takes it away."

Brian O'Connor/Paul Walker, Fast & Furious 6

[asukafujima]

Brian O'conner? He's gone for a life-time road trip, he's on the road forever. His destination must be paradise.

[observationsinexile]

A Movie’s Gotta Have a Code

Fast & Furious 6 has no business existing. In 2001, The Fast and the Furious pulled in an opening weekend box office of $40,089,015 – a modest but impressive haul for a niche street racing movie fronted by two Hollywood B-listers, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Two years later, its sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious was released without its now-established action star (Diesel, who instead opted to star in xXx amidst a scheduling conflict) and went on to gross less domestically than the original. Hollywood being Hollywood, they squeezed out a third  – now without Walker or Diesel* – and completed the trilogy, albeit to the smallest box office return yet. They’d had a good run. They’d netted a profit but with three in the bag, its stars jumping ship and a dwindling return, surely it was time to call it a day?

And yet here we are, another three movies on and the franchise is stronger than ever (Fast 6 has raked ~$480 Million worldwide in just 10 days).  If, like me, you’ve sat revving your cinematic engines waiting for each release, you’ll realize there’s a very good reason that Fast & Furious 6 exists. Like the film’s anti-heroes (Domenic Toretto and Brian O’Conner) this movie too has "a code". A formula that for six installments has stuck true to what its audience wants: a fun, action-filled, over-the-top, almost self-parodying injection of ridiculousness that asks little of its fan base in return. To that, I raise a Corona (more on that in a second), toast “mi famiglia”, and share just a few nuggets of how this franchise has delivered exactly what I was hoping for, once again.

Corona: You know how the old saying goes, you can lead a street racer to water but he’ll put his feet in it and drink a Corona. Domenic Toretto is to Corona what Don Draper is to Canadian Club. Bottle his sweat, throw in a lime and repeat. At one point in Fast 6 I had a heart palpitation when he and O’Conner actually had another brand of beer. God knows what the fee was for that product placement. Good luck with the brand recall on that, whoever you were. I pretended it didn’t happen. And thank god, by the end, order was restored with that glistening gold nectar providing the most refreshing reason for Toretto’s arm being cocked at a perfect 90˚ flex.  But as Fast fans know well, it’s not really about what they’re drinking. It’s more about how they drink it. Go to the 2 minute mark of this video to see what I mean: http://bit.ly/ZnqaNV

Totally Forgivable Plot Holes: It’s amazing these movies are rated PG. I don’t say this because I think kids shouldn’t be able to see hundreds of girls in bikinis or reckless driving or repeated violence. No, I say it because kids ask “why?” a lot. Don’t ask me questions when my brain is in neutral. In the past, holes in the plot have frequently been dismissed by Vin Diesel, as Toretto, simply saying “don’worryaboudit” and then just moving on. In Fast 6, they know that by now we’ll apply our own “don’worryaboudit”’s and alleviate Toretto of this responsibility altogether. He’s got enough on his hands. The movie starts with O’Conner now a new father to Toretto’s nephew. Toretto is adamant that O’Conner is no longer part of “the old life” where they put themselves in danger. Five minutes later, he’s back to the old life, partnering Toretto on a dangerous job - but only because Mia, his wife/Toretto’s sister, insists they’re better as a team and should always stick together. "Sticking together" is the only condition on which his wife and brother-in-law are cool about him leaving his newborn baby. About 2 days later in the timeline of the movie, O’Conner leaves Toretto in England – without him putting up a fight – to go to LA (where he faces life in prison) to get information on the whereabouts of someone in England from someone in an LA prison….by going to prison as an inmate!!! After an ex-colleague at the FBI sneaks him out, he tells O’Conner “I hope this was worth it,” to which O’Conner replies, “more than you’ll ever know.” The information he retrieved from this freedom-threatening, friend-leaving, vow-breaking, fatherless-child-making, transcontinental jaunt? That the bad guy they’re after doesn’t let people get close to him. Don’worryaboudit.

“I Got This”: The only words uttered more in the Fast & Furious franchise than “and”, “the”, and “famiglia” are “I got this”. It’s a very important statement due to the size of Toretto and O’Conner’s crew and the array of tasks they have to divide and conquer. Occasionally, it’s a no brainer who takes what. Tej (played by Ludacris), is the technical expert who is able to fill any number of conveniently vacant warehouses around the world with world class, military grade technology with 1 to 2 hours’ notice and operate them without a user manual. If there’s a technical task needing an owner, Tej got this. But anything else – say, retrieving some finger prints for duplication, some basic surveillance or going on a Corona run– somebody else needs to step up and say “I got this.” If Vin Diesel says “I need to take a leak”, somebody’s saying “I got this.”

Domenic Toretto’s Half-Smile:  Like Brad Pitt constantly eating half a fast food order in the Ocean’s 11 movies or Tom Cruise’s intense, perfect-form sprinting in every movie on his resume, Vin Diesel has perfected the half smile response as his signature move. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s like he wants to smile but his face is too lazy so he begins with one side of his mouth, stops and then let’s out a weird grunt (which you should understand is a laugh). This is often done following a ballsy wise-crack from O’Conner and sometimes with a Corona half way to his mouth. You can see it in this video (which I did not make, promise) briefly at 2:36 in the car: http://bit.ly/Znvn88

Life, A Quarter Mile at a Time: Ever wonder why your minutes sometime feel like hours? Your hours can feel like days? You may think it’s because you hate your desk job but it’s not. The most likely cause is that you’re living your life, probably unbeknownst to you, somewhere between 50 and 100 miles at a time. Not these guys. From day one, they’ve been living life a quarter mile at a time. Fast 6 starts with Toretto and O’Conner living what many people would consider the perfect life: sitting on a porch by the ocean in paradise, loved ones around them, fridge full of Coronas, and not a care in the world. Only, this is not the perfect life for them. This kind of stasis is their desk job, and so when opportunity (aka The Rock in Under Armour) knocks, they answer. They’re in their mid-30’s (let’s say 35). The movie takes place over the course of about 2 weeks. They travel from the Canary Islands to London (2155 miles), From London to Seville** (1345 miles), Seville to Los Angeles (approximately 5000 miles) and, at a guess, about 50 miles around London. That’s 8550 miles. That’s 34,200 quarter miles— or “moments”—in just the last 2 weeks (0.1% of their life so far). I mean, what. a. life.

With that in mind, it’s probably no surprise that there’s rumored to be another three Fast & Furious movies being planned, starting with a return to Tokyo (Spoiler Alert: teased at the end of Fast 6 with the introduction of Jason Statham as the new antagonist. “Giddy” does not even begin to describe it).  With this life, it’s clear Toretto and O’Conner will not be able to stop – and so it must be chronicled – until their dying day. Ride or Die, busters.

A few other random thoughts on Fast 6:

- The final action sequence, which we'll refer to as "cars vs. freighter plane" is legitimately one of the greatest action sequences of all time. They nailed it. It also includes a great "Don'worryaboudit" moment in that the runway is conveniently 7 miles long. Perfection.

- Gina Carano, MMA Fighter-turned-actor, seems to have some real acting chops. Which is to say she's the perfect addition to this franchise at least. A nice addition.

- Funny how The Rock spent the first 5 years of his acting career trying to get away from his WWE past by shedding a ton of weight, pursuing roles that were at least ironic to his size, if not exactly counter to them. Since his inclusion in Fast 5, however, The Rock has got physically bigger than ever, accentuates his size more than ever via Under Armour (in these movies) or string thin wife-beaters (Pain & Gain) and is now even working in his vernacular from his days as WWE's "most electrifying man", frequently spewing "Son Bitch" and "Guaran-damn-tee" in Fast 6.

- It was kind of cool to see this take place, for the majority of the movie, in London. Being English, I know that our roads are probably a street racer's nightmare (hundreds of years old, filled with puddles, built for small cars and small people). That said, I can't quite put this above Fast 5 on my all time favorite list. Whether it's LA, Mexico, the Islands or Brazil, I firmly believe the Fast franchise fits best in tropical settings with a Latino-infused soundtrack. It goes better with the Coronas.

- Last thought: For the first time, the bad guy had intentions beyond just organized crime. I know they feel compelled to keep raising the stakes but I hope that for Fast 7, they don't get carried away with what the guys are up against. I'd rather see Toretto & O'Conner taking on those who threaten their lifestyle rather than those who threaten democracy. If we're not careful, Fast 9 will end by Toretto martyring himself for mankind by driving his 1970 Dodge Charger through the wall of the Starship Enterprise and into an earthbound meteor.....Hold up, let me write that down.

Footnotes:

*Vin Diesel did technically appear in the third installment, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but only for a second at the very end to tease his return in the 4th movie.

**I don't know if it was actually Seville but we know it was Spain. Let's not put too much focus on my geography and math for this point.

Photo Courtesy of www.thefastandthefurious.com