You keep running your piehole and you’re going to smell an asskicking.

Fast and Furious 6

(2013)

The retooling of the Fast & Furious franchise as a heist movie, ensemble take-down thing, rather than car racing, paid off big time with Fast Five. So if you have a new formula and it works, don’t fix it. The series may have newly defined its genre, but structurally it bears most resemblance to the Bond films; the plots are a loosely stringed together series of set pieces. And they go on and on and on. Not out of a desire to progress the narrative but due to a "longer means better" template. There’s also the small matter that there are so many regulars to cater for now that anything less than two hours would be unfeasible.

This time around Vin Diesel’s Dom is beckoned from retirement by Dwayne Johnson’s formerly antagonistic DSS agent. The goal; to bring down a crew led by Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). The MacGuffin is pure Bond; Shaw is attempting to build a Nightshade device, a “tech bomb” that can blind a country for 24 hours. Each robbery he pulls off is to secure a vital component. So that sets up the structure. What about the theme? Don’t worry, “We’re family” is a refrain repeated so often that you’ll be in no doubt about everyone’s motives.

Poor amnesiac Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) isn’t dead after all, but she’s working for Shaw. This provides Vin with a particularly strenuous acting challenge as he tries to imply he has feelings for Rodriguez (there’s more sexual tension during Paul Walker’s one platonic scene with Letty than in the numerous ones between Dom and her). Still, both the ladies in Dom’s life concur that, “He’s an amazing guy” (which he is, it’s no inconsiderable feat to leap from a car on a bridge, grab hold of your intended in midair, and land unscathed on the bonnet of another car on another bridge). Unlike most movies, the other halves are fully on board with this notional family, Jordana Brewster practically packing off husband and father of her child Paul Walker on the mission. You’d have thought she’d want him to stay at home and not be killed. But no. These guys have extraordinary, unflinching values; they even end the movie by saying grace!

What's most interesting is that four-times-helmer Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan have pulled together the trappings of mythology and iconography from the thinnest of histories; with none of the character investment to make them fly, or any emotional depth, the reliance is purely on audience recognition. This succeeds up to a point, but it doesn't take long not to give much of a shit. Fatigue is inevitable.

There is a very democratic endowment of scenes to all the major players, but it's the comic banter of Tyrese Gibson’s Roman and Ludacris’ Tej that leaves a lasting impression. They have numerous amusing lines, and Gibson is a naturally very funny guy (the jokes about his “big-ass forehead” are especially chucklesome). But this is all on the same level as the movie itself; thrown together, rather than lovingly crafted. What is done is well done, but t’were well it were done wittily. Gibson is also involved in the film’s most amusing set piece, as it becomes refreshingly evident that he is no pugilist. Both he and Han (Sung Kang) take an arse-whooping from Jah (Joe Taslim) in the best movie scene set on the Tube since… Skyfall? It seemed like there was only An American Werewolf in London for years, and then two come along at once (speaking of which there are also good few London buses to behold).

Dwayne Johnson again shows he's a decent actor beneath those “Samoan Thor” muscles, but his character is perhaps the least interesting of the lot (which is really saying something). Still, he’s a guy who can turn a line like “You keep running your piehole and you’re going to smell an asskicking” into pure gold, so it’s a pleasure to have him in the ensemble.

The fella I wonder about it is Paul Walker, coasting on blockbuster cachet but even less able to attract a non F&F audience than Vin. He gets a significant enough plotline (going undercover in prison) because he’s one of the originals, but he leaves no impression. I’m sure Walker is a perfectly affable chap, but he must be counting himself very lucky that he has, by default, avoided the career wipe-out of Josh Hartnett.

Justin Lin handles the mayhem and car stunts in a superficially coherent manner (appropriate I suppose) but he is less certain with close-quarter fisticuffs. Rather than relying on the solid choreography he employs shuddery after-effects. Still, I can’t deny there’s enjoyment to be had with the gleeful bombast he brings to the car chases. An early one, through London as pursuing heroes find their cars shorting out, is only topped by the sheer excess of the aforementioned bridge sequence (“Somebody better do something. I got a tank on my ass”). Then there’s the finale, with the already much commented on interminable airport runway. That didn’t get me double-taking so much as the sight of Dom driving his car through the exploding nose of a plane. You go, Vin.

I suppose I should find the manufactured sincerity and the glib platitudes laced throughout the movie endearing (“What you found out is for you, what we do now is for her”; eh?) but they go to highlight how disposable these movies are. They aren’t going on to attain classic status, not with this kind of writing. I’ll be interested to see what James Wan’s debut on the series brings, but not overly. The script is still from Morgan, who has pared nothing down. The departees from Six, both regular (Gal Gadot, Kang) and one-off (Evans and Gina Carano, neither of whom make much impression) are replaced by a raft of faces, both familiar to the series (Lucas Black) and new (Kurt Russell, Tony Jaa, Djimon Hounsou). It looks like it will also takes a leaf out the Die Hard book; it will now be a revenge action heist movie, with the Stath surfacing at the end of Six to inflict furious wrath for the demise of little brother Evans. In a move of hilariously complex continuity that belies the Neanderthal nature of the series, the Stath is the guy who kills Han in Tokyo Drift, the actual Fast and Furious Six. I’m sure we’re all relieved that everything makes sense now.

***

Comments

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog