Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

I walked into the movie theater knowing only two things about the series: that it involved cars (the fast) and that it had to involve some completely predictable plot line to form the basis and I suppose, "furiousness," of the movie, as with any other run-of-the-mill action flick (the furious). I don't know what I expected (my expectations were undeniably low), but I guess you get exactly what you expect with a movie like this: cars, beautiful people, ridiculous action sequences, more cars, and more ridiculous action sequences. I can see why this testosterone-fueled series developed such an avid following over the years; this movie has all the ingredients of an action movie made specifically to entertain, without much to say for its plot.

At its very base, Fast & Furious 6 is about friendship and that, to me, is the only redeeming quality of the movie. With the antagonists essentially a mirror image of Dom's crew, the only thing that differentiates the two is loyalty and that is essentially how Dom and his Fast Six crew wins out in the end. If there's one thing Justin Lin has yet to learn, it's that the best action movies are the ones where the audience is made to care. At the heart of any action movie is the character's basest need to survive. It is the director's job to make the audience root for the characters as they struggle to live while undoubtedly risking their lives for some honorable cause. Friendship alone is not enough to save the movie from the boredom I felt at certain points in the film. You'd think car chases (with a tank plowing down the wrong side of a highway, no less) and explosions would cause some level of excitement, but instead I felt only restlessness and the hope that those scenes would soon be over to allow for the plot to continue to move forward. Some characters do end up dying in this movie--the Fast Six crew cannot remain intact forever with all the crazy antics they get involved in, but I felt maybe only a short moment of loss, if that, before more explosions and car chases were thrown at us. I couldn't even care about the characters if I tried; we weren't given a chance to.

Some of the action sequences were so outrageous I actually laughed out loud in the theater. With any action movie, we have come to expect the survival of at least the main characters, despite how ridiculous the odds are they'd survive if that same scenario were to occur in reality. There is a limit to that ridiculousness, however, and this movie toes that line. Some of the more outrageous moments involve gravity-defying jumps and a fight involving The Rock and the antagonistic version of himself.

Was this movie worth $11.50? In my opinion, definitely not, but you'll certainly get your fill of explosions and car chases for maybe an entire month.