The Fast And The Furious 6 is a film without heart but with a whole lot of sparkle, and even more volume, says Raja Sen.
There are clearly varying schools of thought regarding just how much sense the modern Hollywood boom-boom blockbuster is allowed to make: Sam Mendes, for example, takes a 007 film like Skyfall and tries to make it smart and taut; Michael Bay takes his Transformers films and keeps making the explosions louder and the shorts worn by his heroine even shorter.
Christopher Nolan miraculously makes Batman movies so beautifully crafted they keep cineastes happy and, simultaneously, so logically inconsistent that they go on to earn piles of money.
Based on the film I just walked out of, The Fast And The Furious 6 isn’t about niggling details like plot and character as long as the stunts can be amped up -- and this time they reach a level so ludicrous that the film ends up like an animated film.
Without heart but with a whole lot of sparkle, and even more volume. Like if Fox would make Cars 3.
Physics? How dare you, sir?
I should, at this point, tell you that I walked into TF&F6 unencumbered by any previous franchise baggage -- of any velocity or ferocity. No, I haven’t
seen the one that kicked the whole saga off, when the blonde guy was apparently a cop.
I haven’t seen the one set in Tokyo (which, apparently, takes place after the events of this particular film, so, well, um) and, heck, this is my first ever Vin Diesel film.
And one of the reasons I think I survived the viewing was because there’s enough of an ensemble out here to make up for Diesel and the peculiarly intimidating nature of his scalp. (I bet it glows in the dark.)
And yet it’s hard to look away from the screechy mess that is TF&F6 simply because it knows that it’s a B-grade film -- a B-grade film getting a production budget beyond its wildest dreams, simply because of the warped times we live in -- and so there is a joyous, completely unpretentious insanity to it all, and this shows in the film’s energy.
A rag-tag group of outlaws are corralled to fight (for the system) against a slimier threat than them all -- it could be any number of bad Westerns. Well. If WWE wrestler The Rock was playing sheriff, that is. Yee-haw.
There’s lunacy. And there’s energy. And while this is an utterly stupid film that seems almost proud of being unmemorable, it mostly amuses. Oh, and Gina Carano is awesome.
Rediff Rating: