All the brawn but none of the brain, that’s always been the motto of the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise. There’s some mumbo-jumbo about family, friendship and love thrown in for good measure but let’s face it, the people who enjoy these movies it’s all about the cars, the races, the hulking physiques and the women. So does it deliver where it matters?
The Rio heist behind them, all of Dom’s (Vin Diesel) team is scattered across the world enjoying the fruits of their labour, until they are called back into action to stop a mercenary called Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) who’s after a high-tech military chip. Their former pursuer, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) offers them full pardons in return for their assistance in bringing Shaw down. The team regroups, cracks a few jokes, rides a few cars and blows shit up in general. A couple of double crosses and twists later, the real “driver” shows up and sets up the plot for a sequel that links the movie back to the third part in the series.
Everything from your grandmother’s grinder to tanks to a massive Russian cargo plane are thrown into the mix. The double-crosses hold little surprise and the jokes are recycled from previous movies. The action sequences on the other hand are quite the spectacle and defy the laws of physics, every chance they get. Planes are anchored down by cars, cars burst out of flaming planes unscathed, tanks are flipped over and people jump improbably distances to grab onto other people plummeting to their deaths and land perfectly like cats dropped from a skyscraper. If this isn’t classified as a superhero movie, it’d be a crime.
Vin Diesel mumbles his way through yet another role while the Rock actually displays the only ounce of genuine charisma in the whole movie. Gina Carano gets a fight or two while the rest are simply collecting a paycheck. Even Indonesian actor Joe Taslim (from the Raid: Redemption) is wasted as one of Shaw’s henchmen.
If you enjoy your action movies bombastic, then this one is for you.
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