Fast And Furious 6 - Review

Fast And Furious 6
(2013 - May 24)
Action | Crime | Thriller
2 hrs. 10 min.

Rated: PG-13 Intense sequences of violence, action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality and significant profanity Read more
Grade: C+

Director: Justin Lin
Writers: Chris Morgan (screenplay), Gary Scott Thompson (characters)
Stars: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson | See full cast and crew

Hobbs has Dom and Brian reassemble their crew in order to take down a mastermind who commands an organization of mercenary drivers across 12 countries. Payment? Full pardons for them all. 

I admit it...Fast and Furious 6 is the first of this franchise I have seen. This is not my type of movie. How does the saying go, if you have low expectations the chances of being disappointed are diminished. Well, that being said this film was better than I expected it to be. That isn't saying much because I expected total boredom.

As expected there are lots of explosions, constant noise, lots of cars revving their engines and driving fast and dangerously and almost as many crashing and burning. This film has a lot of things to annoy me and it did. Stupid plot lines people equipped with weapons but deciding to settle threats via fist fights...so stupid! The screen is absolutely dripping with machismo and testosterone, so freely flowing that it could trigger a contact erection...even if you don't sport that type of equipment!

The action and stunts, however, are incredible and intriguing to watch, even though they are so ridiculously implausible (For example, the climactic scene with the cargo plane...this has got to be the longest runway on earth. It is all just so fantastically inane. But the special effects are, in deed, the reason I gave this film as high a grade as I did. Note the photo below)...

but none the less fascinating to watch. So, if you like loud movies with lots of car crashes, guns, fist fights, cardboard cut-out acting, buy a large popcorn and soda, leave your brain home and enjoy yourself.

Synopsis:

Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson lead the returning cast of all-stars as the global blockbuster franchise built on speed races to its next continent in Fast & Furious 6. Reuniting for their most high-stakes adventure yet, fan favorites Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Elsa Pataky are joined by badass series newcomers Luke Evans and Gina Carano.

Since Dom (Diesel) and Brian's (Walker) Rio heist toppled a kingpin's empire and left their crew with $100 million, our heroes have scattered across the globe. But their inability to return home and living forever on the lam have left their lives incomplete.

Meanwhile, Hobbs (Johnson) has been tracking an organization of lethally skilled mercenary drivers across 12 countries, whose mastermind (Evans) is aided by a ruthless second-in-command revealed to be the love Dom thought was dead, Letty (Rodriguez). The only way to stop the criminal outfit is to outmatch them at street level, so Hobbs asks Dom to assemble his elite team in London. Payment? Full pardons for all of them so they can return home and make their families whole again.

Building on the worldwide blockbuster success of Fast Five and taking the action, stunts and narrative to even greater heights, Fast & Furious 6 sees director Justin Lin back behind the camera for the fourth time. He is supported by longtime producers Neal H. Moritz and Vin Diesel, who welcome producer Clayton Townsend back to the series. (c) Fox

Some of the car crashes are a little more intriguing after watching this clip (below) on the 'flip car' they built for the film.

The Fast and Furious franchise has legs. Installment 6 had a budget of $160 million and even before opening in the USA has already earned $177 million in foreign markets and added $98,528,000 on its US opening weekend. Naturally there will be a 7th installment which is scheduled for 2015. The new villain is revealed in a spoiler at the end of the film. 

Below is the trailer for Fast And Furious 7.

Behind the scenes with director Justin Lin

Cast

 

 Vin Diesel          Dwayne Johnson           Paul Walker

Dominic Toretto                     Hobbs                      Brian O'Conner  

     Jordana Brewster      Tyrese Gibson       Michelle Rodriguez  

Mia                               Roman                                  Letty

     Sung Kang                Gal Gadot                Ludacris       

  Han                                   Gisele                                  Tej    

      Luke Evans             Elsa Pataky       

Shaw                                Elena

The Raven - Review

The Raven (2012)

Mystery | Thriller

MPAA Rating: R Bloody Violence and Grisly Images 

Information for parents: Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+. Read More

Release date:  27 April 2012 (USA) 

Running time:   111 minutes

Rating: C-

Budget     $26 million

Total Lifetime Grosses (as of May 1, 2012)

Domestic:	$8,582,941	70.7%
+ Foreign:	$3,558,891	29.3%
= Worldwide:	$12,141,832

The premise of this film, set during the last few days in the life of Edgar Allen Poe, is to reveal what happened during those last days. Poe (John Cusack) is a penniless drunk with few friends, depending on money he gets from The Baltimore Times for writing disparaging reviews of other writers' work to keep him in the booze. Emily (Alice Eve) the woman he loves is difficult to reach because her father Colonel Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) has a very understandable dislike of Poe, so we are supposed to accept the assertion that a young beautiful girl is head over hills in love with an older man, at the end of his career and is willing to sneak around behind her very wealthy father's back to see him. For some unexplained reason, Poe has a pet raccoon.

Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) ascertains while investigating the brutal murders of a mother and her 12- year-old daughter in a locked room, that the crime scene has a striking resemblance to a mystery story that was just published in the local newspaper, Poe's 'Murders in the Rue Morgue'. He sends a squad of policemen out to bring Poe in for questioning. Upon being convinced that a psychotic serial killer has been using Poe's writings as inspiration. Although Fields doesn't believe Poe is responsible for the murders he is definitely connected to them. A second murder is discovered, this time based on the story The Pit and The Pendulum. As you might imagine this is a gruesome death, if you are aware of the story. If you're not, well, let's just say that the pendulum has an enormous blade on the end of it. This ushers the film in the direction of 'Poe' meets 'Saw', or in other words gratuitous gore. The victim the pendulum is a writer at The Baltimore Times who wrote highly negative reviews of Poe's stories. A crimson mask found on body is a message from the killer to Poe and the police about where he will strike next. The killer is playing a game with them and when the life of his beloved Emily is threatened Poe is forced to play the killer's game.

Raven takes a while to get going and one of my objections is the usage of profaine and raunchy language, particularly in the early scenes in what appears to be an attempt to modernize or update the story to contemporary language to give it an edgy feel. It doesn't work and is distracting. (Speaking of distracting, who was the genius who came up with the closing credits. They were totally out of sync with the rest of the film. It was like splicing the credits for Pulp Fiction onto the end of Passion of the Christ, very distracting and annoying.) The film might be minimally entertaining if you are not familiar with Poe's writing, the acting is serviceable but the characters don't really get much chance for development. Cusack's performance, I would assume, bore very little resemblance to the real Edgar Allen Poe is over the top and similar to Robert Downey Juniors's take on Sherlock Holmes. The film a whole had the taste of a mystery thriller romp with a pulpy comic book feel. It tries too hard to be compete with the more sensational, grisly films of this genre yet still maintain an air of superiority by not actually getting all the way into the gutter but just tiptoeing though it. It can't seem to decide if it is an edgy historical thriller or a comic book superhero adventure. In the end it doesn't really work very well.

 

 

Cast:
	John Cusack	...	Edgar Allan Poe
	Luke Evans	...	Detective Fields
	Alice Eve	...	Emily Hamilton
	Brendan Gleeson	...	Captain Hamilton
	Kevin McNally	...	Maddux
	Oliver Jackson-Cohen	...	John Cantrell