The ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise continues to grow as a result of its rebirth in 2009 with ‘Fast & Furious’ and the fever pitch it reached with 2011’s ‘Fast Five’. As a result of the rebirth of the franchise, we are presented with ‘Fast & Furious 6’ this year, and the franchise is just as strong as ever.
Vin Diesel and Paul Walker continue to drive the franchise, Diesel as the action star and Walker as the soul of the films. The addition of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in ‘Fast Five’ created an opportunity to use the fifth and sixth films in the series as a chance to flip the franchise from a series about street racing to more of a car heist franchise, and this has been pulled off wonderfully.
The action sequences in ‘Fast & Furious 6’ are once again amazing, and the fact that they continue to use practical effects when filming, including the tank scene where they actually destroyed upwards of 250 cars with the tank, highlight the successes of the franchise.
New villain Owen Shaw, portrayed with as much charisma as could be by Luke Evans, is the one downside to ‘Fast & Furious 6’, and that is not a fault of Evans at all, but just in how the film was presented. There was simply just not enough screen time to provide to the character, especially when you take into account the manner in which the film tied together some loose plot threads from some of the previous films.
As was the case with ‘Fast Five’, there was an epilogue scene that will be used to setup the next film in the franchise, and this scene also does what we have all been waiting for in tying together all of the films from the series, and also introducing us to an actor that will be well worth the wait to see how he works as a villain, and one that is also quite used to driving fast cars as well.
I don’t want to spoil too much of this film, but for fans of the franchise, it will be well worth the trip to the theatre to check it out.
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Mayer on Movies 