Fast & Furious 6 comes with an exclusive first look scene from Fast & Furious 7, because at the time the DVD and Blu-ray was produced, promoting a sequel currently in production was a great opportunity. However, the content of that scene is going to hit people pretty hard because it’s all about death, dealing with a character’s death and death looming. What Roman (Tyrese) says to Brian (Paul Walker) is way too eerie.
There wasn’t time to pull this scene from the Blu-rays, even though promoting the next film is no longer a priority at the moment, but then if they did that you’d just want to see the scene more. I really like the scene, not an action scene but rather a dramatic scene about the Fast and the Furious family, and I hope the film that it promises can still be made. I mean, it’s a scene we all expected to see after the Easter Egg tease in Fast & Furious 6 (and indeed ever since Tokyo Drift), but the sensitive part of me has to warn fans to brace themselves.
I want to celebrate how happy Fast & Furious 6 made me when I first saw it, and will continue to make me when I remember the highlights of Walker’s career. Fast & Furious 6 made me so happy. I love this series and Fast Five was actually my least favorite. You know, the most popular one that everyone loved, that’s the one I didn’t like. I felt they turned a subculture into a mainstream heist movie, and watered down the uniqueness of it with an overcomplicated plot. If 6 still did all the other things that everyone else liked and all the things that I liked, we can all be happy.
What made me the happiest in the movie is simply the title card, and it’s no longer a secret so I can discuss it and start referring to the title as such after this paragraph. I get that most super fans aren’t following along the clever naming of the sequels, so they have to call it Fast & Furious 6 to let general audiences know that this is another one of those movies that have these people you like in it. But for us, in the movie, where it counts, they gave it the right title. It’s Furious 6. I can’t even describe how happy that made me. On the commentary track, Lin confirms Furious 6 is the true title and goes into detail about why marketing wouldn’t call it that. Actually, he had an even more awesome title naming idea when he was planning to make two movies, but for a single movie this is perfect.
The Fast and the Furious movies are best when they keep the plot simple, because it’s the characters, the world, the cars and the action that are important. We’re back to basics here. There’s a bad guy, Shaw (Luke Evans). Hobbs (The Rock) has to stop him, needs Dom (Vin Diesel) and the gang to do it, and oh, they can get Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) back too. It’s as pure as the revenge plot of Fast & Furious or the coming of age plot in Tokyo Drift, with the added bonus of all the history between Letty, Dom, Brian, Roman, Tej (Ludacris), Han (Sung Kang) and Gisele (Gal Gadot). Even Hobbs has history now.
Now I’m always getting on movies for turning everything into a personal story. I think it’s a tired cliché that “this” mission is more important, because that guy tried to kill my family or some contrived backstory. Here’s where Furious 6 goes deeper than the personal. Yes, it’s personal that Letty is alive and working for a bad guy, but Dom isn’t going after her for his own revenge. He’s trying to bring her back. That’s not personal. That’s selfless. I guess 7 was designed to be personal too based on the tag at the end of Furious 6 but I trust them to find the thematic unity in the basic plot.
The explanation for how Letty is back is perfect. I never believe she died in part four. I thought she was going to reveal herself to be the mastermind of the whole movie, but I certainly didn’t believe she went out like that. There are a few obvious ways they can go with this, and they didn’t pull the “faked her death” or “twin sister” B.S. The third option is another cliché but it is so perfect for this story, because it apologizes for the mistake of killing Letty out of the series, and it breaks Dom’s heart.
Shaw is a much more badass villain than Reyes in Fast Five. Shaw’s got his own super cars and causes epic destruction. This isn’t just some crook who double-crossed Dom. We need some people who are fast enough and sufficiently furious to take Shaw down. There’s a reason these are the only gang who can do it. At least it’s worthier of their skills than Fast Five. Although, I should go easy on Fast Five. It made everyone else love the series I’ve been defending for 12 years so it can’t be that bad.
The Fast series falls into my favorite subgenre of action movies, the “because it’s awesome” genre. There are some movies that thrive on realism and are excellent at it. I love the Dark Knight take on Batman, the Bourne series when it’s comprehensible, and the Daniel Craig James Bond movies, although they still give us our awesome moments. But I don’t want a movie to be restrained by things that can happen in real life. I’m watching a movie. I want to see the craziest, most absurd, awesome stuff you can creatively think of, and make it look like it’s really happening because that’s the magic of movies.
It is a gift to see heroes launch themselves into the air and dodge falling tanks, without even stopping to explain they have some special training that taught them this. They don’t care. We want to see people fly, then people fly. We want to see tanks, we get tanks. Letty has one line to explain the tank rescue, and it’s even more ridiculous than if they hadn’t explained it at all, so it’s perfect. Brian gets to be ridiculously badass when he goes undercover in prison. If his fighting an FBI agent in Fast 4 was joyfully far fetched, his taking on of an entire drug cartel in solitary confinement is crazy awesome. They bring in Gina Carano as Hobbs’ new partner, and she fights Letty, twice. It’s Haywire vs. Girlfight! If that’s not knowing what the public wants, then I don’t know what it.
I suppose some people will make more of the film’s blasé attitude towards vehicular violence now. I won’t be one of them though I expect Fast 7 to be a more solemn film when it is inevitably completed. Furious 6 was an action lark that actually made it okay to enjoy destructive action. All the pedestrians seem to get out of the way on the street, and I’m going to assume that entire British SWAT team crawled out of the rubble with a few scratches.
I think this was the right approach when you’re going for over the top action. Taking a moment to appreciate the consequences of violence would have been pretentious, and less responsible than just admitting this is a cartoon and everyone’s okay. That won’t be an option for them next time, but even the characters who die in this are given operatic sendoffs. Dom gets shot in the chest and it’s less important that it’s a nonvital shot than it is that it’s a major dis from Letty. Also, sicking the Fast and Furious gang against snooty Brits was genius.
What’s most amazing about this series is that as absurd as the action it celebrates is, these films are sincere. Most action movies won’t go there. They have to be ironic, because they may think the only way you can believe this outrageous action is if they’re laughing. Or they have to be emotionless, because the only way to make it realistic is to take feeling out of it. My favorite action movies are the funny ones – Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rock, Face/Off, Arnold movies – but I think Fast & Furious is taking it to the next level. They’ve got the humor, the craziness and every time Dom talks about family, you believe it. You could be cynical about it but if you go in with an open heart, the film will reward you for believing. No matter how dangerous the mission, it’s for Letty, so no one even considers not going. Also, the character who pulls off the biggest turn, I totally didn’t see it coming. I can’t even call out the actor’s performance because it would be a spoiler, but good job.
Perhaps it could have been more ambitious visually, but the story each sequence tells is awesome. Roman causes one crash and then Brian has to dodge the wreckage, and so on. At least you can see what’s going on. They go aerial and show as much as possible in one take, and I wouldn’t want to be in charge of staging the action and resetting for take two, but maybe those shots could have run a little longer. They could have used Shaw’s flip cars more. Maybe they could have shown some more street car parties, since that’s the world that spawned this family, but the party race we see is the most important Dom/Letty moment so it works. There’s some iffy lighting at night, but listen, if I defend people flying off of tanks, I’m not about to get technical.
The bonus features are really engaging with the whole cast participating in a combination of “talking right at the viewer” and “behind the scenes” style extras. Since this is major studio tentpole film, there are extensive featurettes focusing on every major stunt sequence and character relationship in the sequel. Walker’s genuine love of cars is represented well, as is Diesel’s emotional connection with the series, Justin Lin’s master plan and the whole cast’s passion. Deleted scenes are pretty insignificant trims really. Lin’s commentary is solid though. He explains the technical basics but also filmmaking issues you might not imagine but are very important for budding directors to learn. If a big star isn’t a morning person, you shoot their coverage in the afternoon!
I’ve said it four out of five times before (and additionally for some other genre movies), but you won’t see a faster, more furious movie this year, and I was right. We didn’t. Furious 6 is pure awesome.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
