Sequel suffers from transmission failure
The boys give it the gears, but the souped-up car franchise sputters
It’s enough to make your mechanic lick his lips, slowly: Cars, cars and more cars, all pimped-out and ready for some axle-rocking action.
Stopping just shy of Pixar’s anthropomorphized garage of stock characters, Fast & Furious is essentially Cars for big boys. Granted, there is no Larry the Cable Guy in this unfathomably long-running franchise about hot-rodding outlaws who solve crimes, stop wars and bring justice to the downtrodden by flooring the accelerator, but we’re definitely watching the same bizarre blend of man-machine chemistry.
Oozing a dark, oily sexuality from every manly gasket, Fast & Furious 6 feels like a Gothic romance for gay men.
Even the mere idea of Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson sharing the same frame is enough to make your biceps bulge with anticipation, but throw in a few extreme closeups and some soft lighting as the blue smoke of burning rubber caresses the frame — and you’re cooking macho romance with high-octane gas.
Because the bromance is so palpable and so perfectly cheesy, director Justin Lin didn’t have to rev the dramatic engine. He could have given us this sixth instalment as a dressed-down story of two aging grease monkeys trying to settle into domesticity.
We’ve watched former cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and former criminal Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) drag race through this franchise for years now. But just as this new adventure begins, they both decide it’s time to hang up the crescent wrench.
Brian is a daddy now and Dominic has settled into a relationship with Elena, a woman with a lead foot.
But all that’s about to change when Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) walks into their lives. A group of criminals pulled off a successful attack in downtown Moscow that puts the safety of the western world at risk, and U.S. agent Hobbs needs a team of highly skilled drivers with a criminal past to help capture the menace.
There are times when the whole thing is so insane, it’s downright laughable — which is a good thing, because how else are we supposed to relate to the idea of drag racers saving the world?
Unfortunately this overly long action movie drives around in circles before pulling out of the gate, and it doesn’t bring anything worthwhile to the whole viewing experience because the characters are flat.
Even the elaborate stunt sequences feel contrived and computer-generated.
On the upside, we do get eye candy thanks to Tyrese Gibson and Gina Carano, but they’re not enough to suck on — no matter how juicy the chassis or how big the tailpipe — because the human transmission fails, leaving a souped-up Hollywood engine suspended in mid-air while the shell sits on the shop floor, little more than shiny junk.