This series and I--we go way back. Sort of.

Rating: 3/10 (30 May 2013)

This franchise has been providing big dumb entertainment for 12 years now. And I've been there nearly every step of the way. It all started summer of 2001, when the original came out. I was never one for a car chase or caper film, but something caught my eye about it from the trailer. So I bought my ticket. Sat there, thinking often man this is really dumb. But the action sequences (then directed by Rob Cohen) really gave it muscle. It had this infectious energy that I enjoyed. By the time the end scene (the train scene) came around, I was kind of hooked. I knew they'd make more of these. Unable to wait till the inevitable sequel came out, I ran out and saw 2Fast 2Furious.
Well no. No I didn't. It's the only one of these I haven't seen in fact.
Later they broke off with this sort of spin-off with "Tokyo Drift" stuck to the end. Good for it, thought I. Its theater run came and went, too, without me. This despite the fact that I saw nearly every movie that came out at that time. My time then was more...spacious back then than it is now. Later it would be shown on cable and I caught it then. The reappearance of Dom at the end intrigued me. I thought, you see what they did there? They tossed out some bait to see what they'd catch. And you know what? What they did there may have been the most important moment in the franchise's unlikely history. They enclosed the franchise back into its star. The animal was at that moment named. Now we have something..
When it came to Fast & Furious I actually rented the video as a new release. I was that eager to see it. I enjoyed it even though it was seen on my miserable 32" non-HD television. I remember a fuel truck rolling over in the Dominican Republic and an epic car chase through a drug running tunnel on the US.-Mexico border. And Letty being a double agent in a drug cartel. I must have enjoyed it enough to go out and...ACTUALLY SEE FAST FIVE IN THE THEATER. For the first time since the first F&F film, I was sitting in a theater watching one! They won me back! (applause) It only took ten years but they did it.
While Fast Five's success paved the way for Furious 6 (and 7 and probably 8, 9...), Furious 6 is not the film that 5 is. What made Fast 5 so great was that it is a caper film. It also seemed to send the franchise in a slightly more serious direction by raising the stakes in the form of Hobbs (And what other franchise could ever see adding Dwayne Johnson as a path to seriousness?) But even though Fast Five marks the franchise's serious turn, it's also funny, which legitimized its utter ridiculousness.
Furious 6 really wants to be funny, too. It's kind of like Fast 5's wannabe jealous unfunny brother. Same writers, same director, most of the same cast. And somehow, very different films. It's as if the writers have become boxed in by their own formula. And the script has its issues, for instance:
Why does Riley, if she's actually with Shaw, chase after Letty in the notoriously brutal girl fight? Did they only decide during the later stages of writing that Riley was a mole and just didn't want to ditch the first Riley/Letty fight? It didn't make sense.
In the tank scene, on the Spanish highway, they kill the tank by attaching a cable to Roman's mangled car. But wouldn't the ultra-strong cable just rip through the car? Let alone turn the tank upside down?
Just how long are NATO runways? The climactic scene in the cargo plane must have been set on one that was 200 miles long.
I still like this franchise and will be interested to see more. Jason Statham should be able to infuse it yet again with new energy. They could even get rid of Hobbs (killed in a blaze of glory? Yeah that'd be a good story point). One spot on the crew vacated by Han and Gisele with Sean Boswell (which many of the F&F forums already seem to be discussing).