Fast & Furi­ous 6

There are lessons to be learnt from this sixth instal­ment in the cars/​quips/​boobs fran­chise, such as, if a plot is get­ting bogged down in detail, whack a fight to spice things up.

With this movie, we can now con­firm that, a) Gina Cara­no (star of Steven Soderbergh’s Hay­wire) is a great screen pres­ence and that, b) screen­writer Chris Mor­gan believes a screen­play should have as many one-line zingers as there are min­utes in the film (which are lots). We also shouldn’t for­get that direc­tor Justin Lin is attempt­ing to break Michael Bay’s record of con­tin­u­ous cam­era spinning.

Most impor­tant, how­ev­er, is the world-chang­ing real­i­sa­tion that Vin Diesel has appar­ent­ly man­aged to har­ness the pow­er of flight. In the most mem­o­rable sequence from this high-octane yet actu­al­ly quite bor­ing action epic, Diesel leaps jumps from a mov­ing car across a bridge, tack­ling anoth­er char­ac­ter in mid-air before land­ing on anoth­er mov­ing car. He does this all for ​“love”.

The addi­tion of Dwayne John­son into the burst­ing chas­sis of the Fast & Furi­ous fran­chise gave a conked-out mod­el some extra juice in the dumb, enter­tain­ing and extreme­ly homo­erot­ic Fast Five. Return­ing direc­tor Lin tries to pull off the same trick again but is so des­per­ate to make the sixth film big­ger, fun­nier and more explo­sive than the fifth, that the vehi­cle ends up spin­ning off the track.

Char­ac­ters here are res­ur­rect­ed as read­i­ly and often as a WWE plot­line – a brand with which the film seems to be involved in some mutu­al adver­tis­ing push – the always-charis­mat­ic John­son clothes­lines a vil­lain, uses his ​‘guaran­damtee’ catch­phrase and even refers to the spe­cial move of fel­low wrestler Chris Jericho.

But it’s not unrea­son­able to hope for a lit­tle con­sis­ten­cy of tone. Don’t show John­son shoot a vend­ing machine in the same man­ner as Chief Wig­gum chang­ing the TV chan­nel, or Diesel defy­ing the laws of physics, or a 150mph pur­suit through appar­ent­ly desert­ed Lon­don streets, then expect audi­ences to even shrug when one char­ac­ter betrays anoth­er, or an effec­tive­ly anony­mous sup­port­ing play­er los­es his equal­ly for­get­table loved one.

As for the plot, it’s less a nar­ra­tive, more a loose frame­work with­in which to place as many ped­al-to-the-met­al fights, brawls and gags as pos­si­ble. We open with a Canary Islands pur­suit, revealed as Bryan’s (Walk­er) fran­tic effort to be on time for his first child’s birth before Dom (Diesel) intones, in one of humanity’s deep­est ever voic­es, ​“Once you go through those doors, every­thing changes. Our old life is over”.

Except, of course, it isn’t. After a cred­it sequence which recaps the pre­vi­ous films (a tac­it admis­sion that this fran­chise has been on the road for too long), we trav­el to Lon­don where Agent Hobbes (Dwayne John­son) has recruit­ed Dom and his team to take on the ter­ror­is­ing Owen Shaw (a for­get­table Luke Evans). There are beats about an all-pow­er­ful weapon, find­ing a car man­u­fac­tur­er, find­ing a gun, going under­cov­er in a prison, etc. But Lin seems well aware that the film slows to a crawl when the plot mechan­ics kick in, and so toss­es in wise­cracks and punch-ups wher­ev­er pos­si­ble to keep the momen­tum up.

That said, Chris Morgan’s screen­play doesn’t help – it’s effec­tive­ly one long sequence of ​‘And mean­while, in…’ scenes, with a strange­ly high amount of recy­cled dia­logue. In one Thame­side show­down, Shaw explains his MO to Dom, but his mot­to isn’t even orig­i­nal – it’s the same as The Wire’s Omar. A ​‘high point’ fea­tures the group list­ing engine com­po­nents while anoth­er sequence sees Roman (Tyrese Gib­son) los­ing a fight in front of dozens of wit­ness­es then telling Han (Sung Kang), ​“No-one needs to know about this”. As McBain would say – that’s the joke.

Yet, weird­ly, com­plaints like these are redun­dant: it’s easy to scoff at these films as idi­ot­ic accel­er­a­tion-fests for the Fri­day night crowd, but if the pre­view audi­ence with whom we saw the film is any­thing to go by, view­ers sill enjoy these unwit­ting­ly camp, self-par­o­dy­ing, large­ly inex­plic­a­ble scenes just as much as the inten­tion­al­ly fun­ny or explo­sive moments.

You can quib­ble that it’s odd to make the ​‘heroes’ of the film a career crim­i­nal and a Secret Ser­vice agent who almost beats an unco­op­er­a­tive sus­pect to death in his first scene. You can roll your eyes to the point of risk­ing injury when Rita Ora makes a ter­ri­ble cameo before a street race that’s some­how tak­ing place on The Mall. You can feel anx­i­ety that Gibson’s rel­a­tive suc­cess as a com­ic device here means Uni­ver­sal will take the ill-advised move of green-light­ing a Tyrese/​Ludacris bud­dy comedy.

None of it matters.

For audi­ences who’ve signed up for the chase/​stunt/​joke/​repeat for­mu­la of this fran­chise, Fast & Furi­ous 6 does every­thing they ask. Fans want auda­cious set-pieces, a high laugh-count and a plot that steps on the gas until the che­quered flag, and Fast & Furi­ous 6 deliv­ers at 150mph. And as a post-cred­its sequence reveals, there’s (at least) one more lap to go.