Fast & Furious 6

The mechanical, hastily put together screenplay of Fast & Furious 6 is closer to Die Hard 5 than to Fast & Furious 5. Meeting, action, meeting, action, meeting, action and so on. The meetings are not as funny as they would like to be and the action is comically exaggerated and not easy enough to follow, given that Fast & Furious is the most successful action series of today. Furthermore, the sixth instalment does not take place in an attractive exotic environment like the fifth one does and its story has detours that make it unnecessarily protracted and less dynamic (the visit in the jail, Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez racing), and we’ve already seen all of its highlights in the trailers. (05/26/2013)

... and the bubble burst. NOS² testosterone³ in an absolutely unnecessarily over CGIed action scene which is more like gameplay footage than a regular movie. For Lin, this is a sad return to a never-ending series of routine movies that don’t know when to stop. However much number five was surprising (and deserved) winner of the action premier league, number six is on the brink of relegation to the second league of yawnably familiar rubbish. (05/23/2013)

Chris Morgan and Justin Lin knew what certainty they had in their hands, so it's a good thing they didn't have any reason to repeat themselves this time either. While the dialogue, after the previous simplification, have now ended up being nothing but slogans, wisdom, and catchphrases, the pace surprisingly slowed down and contrary to expectations, there is no exaggerated rush for any attraction. On one hand, that's a good thing because Brian can function as the main character thanks to his prison interlude; on the other hand, there is unexpectedly little happening in the first half. Nevertheless, the Furious gang easily reaches above average. In fact, some of the sequences really get your with their audiovisual concept (the race between Dom and Letty full of hypnotic atmosphere and well-deserved nostalgia), and the final inferno takes your breath away completely. And no, I'm not going to bother discussing the length of the runway in a movie where testosterone and gasoline can overpower absolutely anything. (07/08/2013)

Lin has hit his limits, given that situations involving the characters and their emotional interactions elude him, taking his own feet from under him and in the final decision-making, he is unable to offer more than self-sacrificing glances and theatrical gestures. That’s assuming he doesn't fire off any major action bombs, but rather a still technically brilliant arrangement that has since last time abandoned any semblance of reality and ventured into the sci-fi genre (without a major highlight, moreover). This necessarily means a rough and painful fall that's ultimately hampered by the cast where everyone has parked themselves into their roles in a way that feels like they were just born for them. (06/12/2014)

Modern action. A dynamically directed, testosterone-packed, stunt-filled blockbuster bullshit that can only be enjoyed without reservations by an individual who has never sat in a car and has no idea about the insurmountable power of Earth's gravity or rustic logic. While the fifth one had a better and more sophisticated story and more imaginatively benefited from the presence of the hyper-cool Dwayne Johnson, this one offers a story of the most primitive kind, overblown action (driving around town with a dumpster is still an everyday criminal routine) and a powdery chemistry between characters we simply can't worry about in the ridiculously calculated climactic scenes. But it still looks very good, despite the insane runtime there's always something going on and Michelle Rodriguez is so hot that you simply can't help but cry guilty satisfaction at the end... 65% (06/08/2013)