Fast & Furious & Fierce & Fearless

Letty (Rodriguez) died. She died right in front of our eyes when she was shot after a car-flip. We know it, the characters know it, but running out of fresh new ideas to carry on with the popular vehicular franchise, they have decided to bring her back from the dead. But rest assured that this isn’t the most absurd thing you’ll see in the film. See, The Fast & the Furious series isn’t exactly known for its credibility: the more it embraces its stupidity and its tight, succinct structure, the better.

And to be fair, having Rodriguez rock up out of the blue isn’t all that bad, since she was an invaluable original cast member – plus as a strong grounded female, she gets to go up against ex-MMA fighter Carano in one memorable, merciless fist-fight taking place in the London Underground of all places. She’s also a great excuse for Dom (Diesel) and his gang to come back into the racing game, even though they promised to leave this life behind after the birth of Brian‘s (Walker) baby boy. Turns out Letty is caught up in some illegal activities with notorious international criminal Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) who is waging “vehicular warfare” against the good guys. He drives a fancy, modified racing car with a neatly equipped trick of flipping over any car that races towards him. And it’s Dom’s job to bring her back, since she’s “family”. That f-word gets tossed around so much here that by the end of it all, you’ll get pretty sick of hearing it, especially since it fills up so many chunks that needlessly slows everything down as a whole.

With so many good guys turning up to form a united front, it’s the main antagonist who has hardly any room for himself. Evans, although an effectively smooth-talking baddie, never has the chance to flourish. As a former-SAS you’d think he has more to offer than some driving moves – and aside from a brief showdown between him and Diesel, all Evans has to do is to deliver some smug dialogue, something he has no problem with handling.

Each good guy has something to bring to the film: Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris are mostly there for comic relief (some hits, some misses), Sung Kang and have a love story going on, Dwayne Johnson and Diesel flex their muscles, Walker is the eye-candy for the ladies who doesn’t have much to do in the end, whereas Rodriguez and Carano show that girl-fights can be as brutal, if not more, than boy-fights.

It’s over-crowded and overlong, and the Rock’s grossly enlarged arms deserve their own end-credit mention (would NOT like to look at those under IMAX conditions), but any film that pairs up Diesel and Dwayne Johnson for a smack-down is bound to be enjoyable – which is exactly what this is all about. Forget about logic, forget about how two race cars can slide and glide around the busy, busy central London (Piccadilly Circus to be precise), the point is, “they’ve got a tank” – and that’s really all you need to know.

And for die-hard fans of the franchise, rest assured that the sixth outing will not be this crew’s last, as the big cliffhanger in a post-credits scene shows us, there is one more vengeful antagonist for Dom to deal with, played by a charismatic actor who is very good at what he does