The movie is wall-to-wall full of the cartoon craziness that fans supposedly want to see, but its flair for the absurd doesn’t always sit well with the family-driven revenge plot that keeps the story tethered to the series’ roots. #JusticeForHan.Ĭars parachuting out of airplanes, people driving between Middle Eastern skyscrapers, The Rock flexing his way out of a cast, Kurt Russell slicking his hair all the way back… “Furious 7” truly has everything, and that proves to be way too much (the lifeless climactic firefight is long enough for the film to stall out seven times over). And this should go without saying, but Han and Gisele deserved better fates. Saddled with way too many lovable characters, screenwriter Chris Morgan deals with his self-created mess as best he can, but the movie never finds the spine it needs to connect all of its parts together (and the Shaw brothers sure ain’t the solution - it’s a good thing that the “Fast and Furious” movies don’t really rely on having strong villains, because yikes).Ī wildly uneven experience that skids between some of the saga’s best setpieces (tank on a highway!) and some of its worst (that endless runway sequence, which is made all the more exasperating by Lin’s decision to shoot it in the dead of night), “Fast and Furious 6” was the first indication that these films may not have quite enough horsepower to sustain the size of their new chassis. Revving up the franchise into full blockbuster mode, “Fast & Furious 6” explodes a colorful action series into a full-blown soap opera, complete with narratively convenient bouts of amnesia, dramatic character deaths, and so much family intrigue that it stretches into the end credits. ![]() Justin Lin was never going to top “Fast Five,” and it’s kind of a shame that he even tried. Also, it lets Dom call Brian “buster” again, which is just the most adorable thing. Refocusing the story on the tension between Brian and Dom, the grim and gritty “Fast and Furious” dutifully lays the groundwork for everything that’s come since, working much better as a prequel to “Fast Five” than it does as a sequel to the original (you can practically hear director Justin Lin switching the franchise’s gears, even if most of this installment is stuck in neutral).īut credit where it’s due: “Fast and Furious” has the good sense to recognize that cars are more fun to watch when you care about where they’re going. The most forgettable and confusingly titled chapter of Vin Diesel’s magnum opus (or of anything else, for that matter), the series’ fourth film takes such a hardboiled, back-to-basics approach that it effectively functions like a soft reboot. Regrettably, Michael Mann has not directed a “Fast and Furious” movie. If Michael Mann had directed a “Fast and Furious” movie, it would have been this one. READ MORE: IndieWire’s Full Review Of ‘The Fate Of The Furious’ ![]() It’s nice that Paul Walker gets to live on through these movies - his unseen character is still chilling on a beach somewhere - but the actor’s death has eliminated the last remaining failsafes that were preventing this franchise from forgetting what it’s all about, and “F8” sends the entire enterprise careening towards a full-blown identity crisis. manage to learn all of the wrong lessons from the last two movies, delivering an episode where everything feels so fake that even the “family” matters seem forced? Gary Gray, whose surprisingly strong remake of “The Italian Job” displayed a tremendous flair for comedic vehicular mayhem, waste the biggest budget of his career on such boring smash-ups? How does Charlize Theron (Furiosa!) sink this into a half-assed story of cyber-terrorism? How did Diesel and co. “The Fate of the Furious” is the “Die Another Day” of its franchise - an empty, generic shell of its former self that disrespects its own proud heritage at every turn. Vin Diesel Teases ‘Trilogy’ for ‘Fast X’ Franchise Finale
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