Fast & Furious 6

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2014)

Well, another Fast and Furious, another guaranteed number of fast cars put to great use in the artform of elaborate crashing and explosions. The plot has a maniac named Sam Shaw (Luke Evans) with a group of terrorists who plan to gain access to a chip that, once applied to a specific device, would knock out a power grid of an area of length certain to create a cascading effect that would cripple this said area with unimaginable death and violence. Michelle Rodriguez returns to the franchise as Dom's (Vin Diesel) love interest, Letty. She has no memory of the Dom family and is a part of Sam's crew. The Rock returns again as "Domestic Security Service" cop, with extreme fighter Gina Carano making her series debut as his partner. They are offering amnesty and freedom to Dom and his gang in order to help them catch Sam and stop him from attaining the chip he desires. What ensues is a tank on a freeway, speedy racecars flying down London streets, a giant attempt to halt the ascent of a massive cargo plane at night, and Dom engaging in a race with Letty for old-time's sake. Seeing Rodriguez and Carano duking it out twice was cool, and the humorous banter between Ludicrous and Tyrese Gibson led to some fine zingers. Of course, Paul Walker's Brian and Dom will have to rescue Jordana Brewster's Mia from captivity, and as often is the case in sequels, members of the crew representing Dom tragically leave the series. But I thought one of the nice additions to the series (in the previous film, Fast Five), Elsa Pataky's Elena is sadly wasted, and having so many characters in one film means the star power must take a somewhat back seat (The Rock gets to flex his pecs and fight this gargantuan behemoth henchman, but his badass cop isn't featured as extensively). Even Walker isn't quite as substantial to the film, although he does sacrifice possible jail time as a fugitive to extradite information "on the inside" from a low-life drug kingpin associated with Shaw. But he's relegated to behind the wheel avoiding calamity as cars flip towards him. I think that's a good bit of what you see (or sadly, in the case, at night when you have to squint a lot and create a lot in your imagination as visibility is tiresome): cars flipping towards other cars in mid air. That and cars landing on roads, sustaining the usual loss that occurs when metal meets asphalt at high velocity. All the regs from the last installment (Sung Kang and Gal Gadot as the thieves who became a couple and joined Dom's family) show up here to help out Dom and Brian. The end chase with the plane in the dark couldn't match the quality of Fast Five (the tank does add bonus points to the mix but that damned vault was awesome!), and the climatic car crashes that result need to really impact with a big bang. Night chosen for this doesn't help add pizazz to the big bang.