Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

The general feeling about sequels is usually that they are a bad thing. Many franchises ran out of steam quickly (Pirates of Carribean, Police Academy, Terminator, Die Hard to name a few) and there is a big number of people who despise sequels, they are often seen as lazy and rehashing an idea. But for every A Good Day to Die Hard there is a Toy Story 3 and there are more examples. Looking at the Fast & Furious franchise I would have never thought that a movie about street racing would result in another 5 movies. Even though the opinions about them might be mixed (personally I didn’t like Tokyo Drift, but had a great time with the rest), nobody can’t deny that is has been a successful run. Part of this is because it stept away from purely street racing and moving towards heists and action, while keeping the fast cars front and center. With Fast Five Dwayne Johnson was added to the existing roster of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and many other returning faces and it injected fresh blood to make it even more exiting. Seeing Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson fight was a cool thing to see. Fast & Furious 6 sees Dwayne Johnson returning, just like the rest of the crew.

After Fast Five both Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) decided to get away from it all and live on a beautiful island. Although they miss their old lives they know they can’t return to the US because they will be arrested. When Hobbs (Dawyne Johnson) suddenly appears to ask Dom for help he refuses, but when he hears that his old girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is still alive he changes his mind. It turns out there is a group of criminals, lead by Shaw (Luke Evans), stealing various parts to build a weapon. They do this with cars and Hobbs needs the best crew to go against them. Dom gets everyone together and they head to London.

Is the setup ridiculous? Yes, it is but if that alone already annoys you then you shouldn’t be watching these movies. In the previous movie a safe was dragged along the streets and this movie ups everything, this includes immense runways, Hobbs doing moves I would expect the Hulk to do and catches only Superman is capable of. The thing is, it were exactly those type of things which made the movie so enjoyable to me.

Once the story is set up there is almost non stop action. If it isn’t in cars, it’s very cool hand to hand fights (the highlight being the one between Michelle Rodriguez and Gina Carano). The set pieces keep growing, even when you think it isn’t possible which results in a stunning finale. Besides action the movie also provides many laughs, most provided by Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson). Forget those after credits bits in the Marvel movies, this one had one which had my jaw drop to the floor and looking forward to the next installment. This movie provided me with a constant high and after leaving I still felt the adrenaline pumping through my body. Reason enough for me to say this is currently the best action movie out this year.