A well shot, fun, ridiculous, dumb action movie

Rating: 6/10 (6 July 2014)

So let me ask you a question. Say, a man had been doing dangerous criminal activities in the past. Having managed to survive and even earn some money, he now has a wife and a young child. An old acquaintance shows up and entices the man to go back to doing dangerous work. What would be the man's reaction and what would be his wife's reaction? If you answered something like, "the man would decline and the wife would get furious and probably start yelling", then you are a sane human living in the real world. And if so, I cannot see how this movie would not irritate you, at least a little, unless you are able to entirely let go of reason for the sake of enjoying action. As for this reviewer, I am no longer able to let go of common sense as much as so many movies ask me to.
This is film where a British policeman shoots a submachine gun from the open window of his car on a busy street; where families and good lives are being abandoned for the sake of a questionable plot; where pretty girls are running around with guns and driving fast cars; where everyone talks cool but dumb.
The movie throws character development and story introduction right out of the window and makes whatever shortcuts it needs to make to get you to the speeding cars as soon as possible.
Well, at least it's efficient at getting you what you are expecting from this movie. Because what Fast and Furious does well is action racing. There is a good variety of vehicles racing, getting smashed and doing the smashing. And all that action is really well shot. The cuts between the shots are fast but not erratic. The shots are made from interesting angles, often from the bystander's perspective. There are also quite a few fight scenes and those are well choreographed and well shot as well. In fact there are usually several fights scenes happening at the same time and you can tell who is punching whom, where and how. You see stunt people doing actual work.
Having said that, even though the story only exists to get you from one action scene to the next and it is not very logical, you do understand what is going on. And as the movies progressed I found something strange was beginning to happen. It was getting continuously better and better and better. The plot mattered less and less and the situation at hand and the relationship between the characters mattered more and more, so that the stupid receded and the good had come to the foreground. The plot raised its ugly head a couple of times again towards the end though.
The acting from the leads, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez hold up this film. Diesel and Rodriguez still have chemistry. If anything, these people gotten better at doing the Fast and Furious stuff. Dwayne Johnson as the lawman is also really good. In fact, with Vin's and Paul's characters always being so serious and playing the same old puppy-eyed good guys, Dwayne's character brings much needed fun to the movie. And his appearance really fits the fast muscle cars.
The character of the British villain played by Luke Evans does not have much flavor besides "eeeevil", but having said that, he does his job at appearing to be really cold and calculating.
The rest of the crew though are not as good, though neither are the things they are given to say. The side characters are really at their best when they shut up and fight. The dialogue is kind of dumb containing a lot of short shallow one-liners. Interestingly though, the better dialogue is saved for the team of the British villain. In fact I wish those guys got more screen time.
In conclusion, a lot of REALLY dumb plot points but all together a fun action movie.
P.S. Somewhere in Spain there is a military base that has a runway that goes the entire circumference of the Earth.