Fast and the Furious 6: Should Be Illegal

Hey y’all, welcome back for the not at all anticipated or ballyhooed return of James hates everything! Don’t ask me where I’ve been, because I’ve tried very hard to suppress the memories.  But, if anyone finds a three legged hairless Chihuahua with an eye patch and a tattoo of a salsa dancer, that can talk, please tell him Juicy Jay made it out alive and I’ll never forget him. I might have imagined that he can talk, but still deliver the message. He understands English and Portuguese at an advanced level. And tell him I’m sorry for making him get a tattoo. It was probably cruel and abusive, and most likely wildly illegal.

Speaking of cruel and abusive treatment, I’m pretty positive sentencing someone to watch Fast and Furious 6, directed by Justin Lin, for committing mass murder at a baby and puppy hospital wouldn’t be a direct violation of the 8^th amendment.

Oh yeah by the way, I was recently forced against my will to review Fast and Furious 6, this weekend and authorities are currently looking for my editor. The FBi is offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading directly to her arrest. Please be aware that the suspect is armed with extremely crappy movies for you to review and is thus quite dangerous.

(Editor’s note: I was quite lenient with James and was totally willing to let him review Ethan Hawk’s Before Midnight instead… I swear.)

I’m embarrassed to admit, but I actually liked the first one. It was quasi-informative on drag racing and cars, implying that whoever wrote it took some amount of time and effort to research its topic, put its characters in fairly difficult emotional scenarios with consequences amidst its action scenes, and at least tried to act like there were some kind of basic laws of physics and California State laws that had to be adhered to in order to give it some shred of believability.

In the sixth installment of this franchise you can take any rules of physics, street racing, constitutional rights, Interpol policy, and common sense, dump it all into a bowl, mix it up, mold it into any form you want, put it in the fridge for half a day to congeal, and stick it straight up your candy ass! (props to anyone who gets The Rock from WWE reference, extra props to anyone who doesn’t) Essentially every single moment in this movie could never happen in reality, and the only thing new we learn about cars or drag racing is that if you squint your eyes and grab the steering wheel tighter your car will go faster than the other person’s.

Starring all of the best bros of cinematic history, you’ve got Vin Diesel, Paul Walker (who I’m 100 percent certain was pried away from a shack on Malibu, drinking coronas for breakfast and eating magic brownies for lunch while surrounded by hot bikini clad college girls and maybe a few still in high school), The Rock, Ludacris, and Tyrese Gibson. But seriously, the only good thing about this cast is that Paul Walker looks hung over the entire movie. Oh, and everyone constantly makes fun of Tyrese the entire movie, which I enjoyed because he is insanely good-looking, and frankly, good looking people always deserve to be brought down a peg or two.

                           (Editor’s note: beauty, eye of the beholder, etc.)

If I’m not allowed to say the plot is a bunch of nonsensical scenes loosely connected to each other, then I’d have to say I think this trainwreck…er, movie is about Vin Diesel’s character trying to get his old girl friend back—who must have died in the previous movie, but really didn’t, and now suffers from amnesia, and works for the most brilliant criminal in the world. This criminal also has a device that doesn’t really make any sense in what it does but is really dangerous, and also wants some other device that Interpol or some European government has that I’m pretty sure does the exact same thing as the device he already has, and because of this, The Rock and Vin team up to catch him. If you are confused, congratulations you are a normal human being.

The opening scene really sets the tone for what you’re about to get yourself into. The shot opens up mid-race along the mountainous Mediterranean coast line. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are hugging tight, blind turns, zero regard given for whether someone else might happen to be coming around the corner, just so they can see Walker’s newborn baby—because nothing says fatherhood and respect for one’s family like absolute disregard for traffic safety. Upon their arrival, Vin Diesel lays down some enlightening knowledge about becoming a father, because it’s actually a little known fact that bro’s are actually the number one reliable source for information on childrearing.

A new tack is taken by Fast and the Furious 6 filmmakers where any moment of emotional conflict is solved simply by everyone just agreeing with our heroes ridiculously dumb and selfish decisions without needing any sort of convincing whatsoever no matter how dire the consequences would be, because let’s face it there are no such thing as consequences in this movie and FAMILY, BRO. Any other type of conflict in the plot is solved by throwing a bad guy across the room. Some un-evolved critics might call this shitty writing, but let’s be real here—what we are actually dealing with is, well… nope, it’s just shitty writing.

The whole thing is just a mindless platform for CGI car races, guys in tank tops, and girls in thongs, and it really left me wishing that the whole movie could have just been a platform for girls in thongs.

Obviously you should not go see this movie, but if you’re the type of person who reads 1,000 word essays on anything, you most likely weren’t going to see this movie anyway. You could see a more compelling story by going to a random neighborhood and watching little kids play bad guys versus good guys with super soakers. Of course, doing so would be really creepy and if caught you would probably have to register in any state you ever decided to move to from that point on, but hey, so long as you actually avoid Fast and the Furious 6, it’s probably worth it.