Anarchy in the Rear View Mirror
I've now seen three fourths of the completed Fast and Furious franchise. A ninth film is scheduled for release in April 2020, so maybe I've seen two thirds?
Two people have told me on separate occasions and independently of each other that the franchise diminishes in quality with each new entry. My assessment? I thought the fourth film dragged at times. The fifth film, Fast Five, restores the essential Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) to the storyline and introduces DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). Diesel and Johnson comprise the muscular bald component of Five and Fast and Furious 6, the latter bringing back from the assumed dead, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), a woman so hot that Toretto will leave his hot Brazilian former cop girlfriend for whom he believed is his shot in the head girlfriend.
Wrinkle--this in 6--comes when Letty, who wasn't head-shot but was injured when her car exploded, has amnesia, a plot device used often in 1960s comedies. They sort of make it work, however. Letty hears Dom say things that seem mysteriously familiar. She cocks her Michelle Rodriguez sexy head and emotions play on her face. She's a good actress putting across her character in these crazy movies.
Diesel's line delivery suffers often from an apparent desire on his part to sound incomprehensible. He breathes forth his words. A sleeping troll might be as coherent. Importantly, he's understood by Letty, by Brian O'Connor, by his sister, the exquisitely beautiful Jordana Brewster (the one who looks like Ali MacGraw), by Luke Hobbs, agent of the State Department organization that sends investigators into the field, in real life doing no good, no doubt. Hobbs's team of hardcore killers domineer over everyone, in Rio shooting up neighborhoods to get Toretto and O'Connor, wanted for the murders of three DEA agents. They didn't kill those feds, but they eventually get arrested by Hobbs. The Rio stuff is in Five.
The next film takes place mostly in London. As in the previous movie, Dom Toretto and his people, his "family," destroy many cars, buildings, causing massive property damage as they flee from or chase their adversaries.
Letty never gets her memory back, although maybe this will turn into the subject for some dialogue in the next few movies--those quiet scenes still hovering about here and there amid the road carnage, gunfights, slugfests, characters going through full length windows without getting cut. Most sublimely, the coolness of Gal Gadot, pushed off a car going 80 miles per hour, as she fires her pistol at the guy who pushed her, flying backwards to certain massive bone breakage and skin flaying contusions, reborn perhaps as Wonder Woman.
The action scenes just get wilder and more improbable than ever, depicting epic destruction that would get talked about on CNN for three or four days. What differs from the first film is the philosophical anarchistic viewpoint exhibited by these street racers. Now, they work with the State Department; granted, freelance "one time only" jobs, but in Five they worked with Luke Hobbs, in 6 they worked with Luke Hobbs, in the end regaining their welcome back to America, slates cleaned. O'Connor and Mia (Jordana Brewster) have a young son, Toretto and blank slate Letty are back together, while hundreds of citizens in Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are talking on the phone with car insurance agents.
Vic Neptune
I've now seen three fourths of the completed Fast and Furious franchise. A ninth film is scheduled for release in April 2020, so maybe I've seen two thirds?
Two people have told me on separate occasions and independently of each other that the franchise diminishes in quality with each new entry. My assessment? I thought the fourth film dragged at times. The fifth film, Fast Five, restores the essential Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) to the storyline and introduces DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). Diesel and Johnson comprise the muscular bald component of Five and Fast and Furious 6, the latter bringing back from the assumed dead, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), a woman so hot that Toretto will leave his hot Brazilian former cop girlfriend for whom he believed is his shot in the head girlfriend.
Wrinkle--this in 6--comes when Letty, who wasn't head-shot but was injured when her car exploded, has amnesia, a plot device used often in 1960s comedies. They sort of make it work, however. Letty hears Dom say things that seem mysteriously familiar. She cocks her Michelle Rodriguez sexy head and emotions play on her face. She's a good actress putting across her character in these crazy movies.
Diesel's line delivery suffers often from an apparent desire on his part to sound incomprehensible. He breathes forth his words. A sleeping troll might be as coherent. Importantly, he's understood by Letty, by Brian O'Connor, by his sister, the exquisitely beautiful Jordana Brewster (the one who looks like Ali MacGraw), by Luke Hobbs, agent of the State Department organization that sends investigators into the field, in real life doing no good, no doubt. Hobbs's team of hardcore killers domineer over everyone, in Rio shooting up neighborhoods to get Toretto and O'Connor, wanted for the murders of three DEA agents. They didn't kill those feds, but they eventually get arrested by Hobbs. The Rio stuff is in Five.
The next film takes place mostly in London. As in the previous movie, Dom Toretto and his people, his "family," destroy many cars, buildings, causing massive property damage as they flee from or chase their adversaries.
Letty never gets her memory back, although maybe this will turn into the subject for some dialogue in the next few movies--those quiet scenes still hovering about here and there amid the road carnage, gunfights, slugfests, characters going through full length windows without getting cut. Most sublimely, the coolness of Gal Gadot, pushed off a car going 80 miles per hour, as she fires her pistol at the guy who pushed her, flying backwards to certain massive bone breakage and skin flaying contusions, reborn perhaps as Wonder Woman.
The action scenes just get wilder and more improbable than ever, depicting epic destruction that would get talked about on CNN for three or four days. What differs from the first film is the philosophical anarchistic viewpoint exhibited by these street racers. Now, they work with the State Department; granted, freelance "one time only" jobs, but in Five they worked with Luke Hobbs, in 6 they worked with Luke Hobbs, in the end regaining their welcome back to America, slates cleaned. O'Connor and Mia (Jordana Brewster) have a young son, Toretto and blank slate Letty are back together, while hundreds of citizens in Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are talking on the phone with car insurance agents.
Vic Neptune
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