Because of this, a crap film series that
focuses on street racing was something that had never really appealed to me. As
a result, I therefore managed to avoid the first few instalments of the turdy-looking
The Fast And The Furious franchise.
I was aware that Vin Diesel was the star but as a rule I tend to avoid
films in which the main character looks as though he could be directly
descended from a potato. Interestingly though, after over a decade of polluting
our screens a dirty little rumour began to circulate which claimed that the
fifth instalment was miraculously pretty good. With minor curiosity, I
therefore decided to watch Fast Five and was shocked and overjoyed to
discover a movie that was so fucking awful that it actually became a work of
unquestionable genius. The story was bollocks, the action was ridiculous, the
dialogue was retarded and the realism was non-existent. Everything contained in
its two hour running time was fucking
hilarious and to be fair, even though the action is completely over the top,
it's still good fun to watch. By the time the credits began to roll I was sixty
percent less intelligent and I couldn't wait to see what they had coming up in
the sequel.
Having now seen both 5 and 6, I think the
franchise's main character is called ‘Dom’ but as most people in it have an
American accent, it kind of sounds like they're all addressing him as ‘Dumb’.
Considering Dumb is played by Vin Diesel who seems to be dead from the eyebrows
up, there's a good chance that this is just a cruel but accurate nickname. Also-
what is up with his voice? Not only does he look like somebody’s cross-bread
Patrick Stewart with a slower-than-average gorilla but he sounds like a ninety
year old woman who’s in the final stages of throat cancer. It's not that he's a
particularly bad actor- it's just that he's clearly taking this film way too
seriously. Also appearing as some sort of super world-policeman is The Rock who,
in contrast to Diesel, clearly knows how moronic the whole thing is and so
seems therefore to just enjoy the ridiculousness of every scene he's in.
Whereas most characters drive around in stupidly expensive looking cars, he
travels about in what looks like a small metal room on wheels. Presumably this
is the only vehicle strong enough to support his entire weight. In many ways, Fast
5 and Furious 6 contain this generation’s Arnie and Stallone. The
Rock is obviously the new Austrian Oak sharing both his Hulkish frame and
undeniable charisma. Vin Diesel by elimination is therefore like Stallone in
that they're both just a bit fucking dull.
 |
| "Rainbow Road can fuck off!" |
To describe this sixth movie as both
brain-dead and utter shite is completely accurate. Thankfully though, I'd have
only been disappointed if it had delivered me a quality story and well-rounded
characters. I was hoping for more of Fast 5's, 'so bad it's good charm',
but no amount of punches to the head could prepare me for the stupidity of Furious
6. For over two hours I sat transfixed at the screen in complete shock with
what I was watching. Occasionally something will fail because the hype is too
great however here, the movie succeeds because my expectations just weren't low
enough. I have never seen something as moronic as this in my life, with Fast
5 now looking like a gritty kitchen-sink drama in comparison. Vin Diesel's
Dumb is thicker than ever and The Rock continues his record breaking attempt of
saying lines that are so ridiculously macho that his script must have been
spelt out in steroids. It's the action though that gets the audience into the
cinema and this certainly didn't disappoint with each set piece getting
progressively bigger and more unbelievable as the film goes on.
The thing is though, that as farfetched as
the action was, I couldn't help but think that it was so creatively absurd that it must have been written by a genius
taking the piss. As everyone will probably know from the trailer, there's a bit
where the cars speed after a plane before it takes off in a sequence that lasts
for about fifteen minutes. However not only does this mean that they're on
about four-hundred-fucking-miles of runway but as the plane takes off, they
have harpooned their cars to the wings. As it begins to fly, the cars dangle
from it with at least two characters having a fist fight on their vehicles’ roofs.
Inside the plane, there's another fight taking place which only climaxes when
The Rock magnificently flies about sixteen foot into the air and delivers a ‘clothesline’
to a villain’s throat. Although if we're going to mention flying then this
minor miracle is nothing in comparison to Dumb’s earlier impression of a big
bald Superman.
To quickly summarise that incident, there
are two bridges that are about forty foot apart and with a drop between them
that must be at least a couple of hundred feet. Dumb is driving on one bridge
with his amnesiac girlfriend surfing the roof of a tank on the other. For
reasons too stupid to explain, the tank is about to get its nose shunted to the
ground meaning the girl is probably about to die. Dumb sees this and so aims
his car at the wall of his bridge, speeds up and climbs out onto the roof. The
Tank gets flipped over causing the girl to be catapulted into the air and over
the drop. Dumb’s car hits the wall throwing him off his roof and also over the
drop and in the direction of the girl. He flies towards her, catches her, carries her back over to
her bridge and the two land safely on a broken car. It's at this moment
that the film started to lose some of the people in the cinema as one person
angrily shouted out, “Fuck off!”, at the screen. Although, interestingly, their
outrage at this presumably implies that everything else so far had seemed
perfectly plausible to them. Having survived without a scratch, the girl now
turns to Dumb and asks how he knew, ‘there'd be something there to soften their
fall’, to which he romantically answers, “I didn't”. Err what!? Are cars
considered soft these day? Last time
I checked, they were made out of pointy metal and glass. When you fly towards
it at like two hundred miles an hour, I'm pretty sure you may as well just hit
the concrete floor because either way- you're
fucked. The guy a few seats in front of me might not have enjoyed what
he'd just witnessed but if I'm going to be honest, it was probably the greatest
ever moment in cinema history.
 |
| If police actually looked like this, it would be the end of crime... |
This film is completely perfect in every
way and so I'm actually struggling to think of anything to properly criticise
it with. You could argue that it's perhaps about twenty minutes too long,
although if we're going to get serious then lets face it, it's really about two
hours and ten minutes too long. I suppose the villain is a little underwhelming
but that could just be because he's played by the only person in the movie with
more acting talent than muscle. However as the closing credits showed, this
minor quibble is about to be rectified in the future. A car pulls out of
nowhere, kills one of the main characters and then Fast and Furious 7's
villain steps out. I won't ruin the identity of this surprise cameo except to
say that seeing him in this franchise caused my brain to just implode with excitement.
I don't think I'd stopped smiling since I sat down but this was the point that
I had to actually prevent myself from doing a full on maniacal laugh/scream
combo. Usually I prefer my films to be at least slightly intelligent but
occasionally you have to admire something that's so confusingly terrible that
it becomes unpredictably brilliant. Judging by the arrival of this new mystery
bad guy, I'm putting it out there now that the sequel is probably going to be a
full blown masterpiece of retardedly epic proportions.
People keep telling me to go back and see
the first few films but in honesty I think I'd miss The Rock too much. In fact,
any movie that I now watch that doesn't feature him seems like a waste of time
to me these days. Like I keep saying though, this film is God-awful, but it’s that
fine blend of shitness which makes it so funny and so much fun. It's so bad
that if I didn't know better, I'd assume it was a spot on spoof of its own
franchise. If you take the risk of watching this then make sure you have something
to stimulate your brain with afterwards as there's a very real risk that you
could just slip into a coma and die. Believe me though, it's worth the danger
as it really is rare to find something that's so consistently entertaining, even
if it is mostly unintentional. Based solely on its mystery villain, Part 7 has
a very real chance of being even better but as things stand, Furious 6
may well be the greatest film of all time. I'm running out of words that can
fully express my love for this film and I can't tell if it's irony or the
brain-damaging effects of having actually watched it… Either way however, you
should definitely see the film simply to witness the joy of car-crash cinema at
its absolute and devastating finest.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
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