Rating: 3 of 5  

I really liked Fast 5. And because of that I kind of have a soft spot for the Fast & Furious movies. kind of. I mean, I haven’t seen the first movie in years and would love to rewatch it. I saw the second movie and thought it was ridiculous. Have never seen the third movie. I tried to but couldn’t get past the first fifteen minutes. The fourth one is on tv all the time so I’ve seen that quite a bit and it’s fun enough on a Saturday afternoon with nothing going on. But I really expected to like 6 at least as much as I liked 5.

I mean, it has Luke Evans! That’s like half your Performance score right there for awesome casting. And the story brings Leti back, even though I’m not a huge fan of Michelle Rodriguez it provides a nice emotional core for all the action.

And the action was mostly great. I know, it’s completely ridiculous but some of those things they do with those cars are just awesome to watch. That’s the fun in the Fast & Furious movies. But while 5 teetered on the believable side of ridiculous – 6 jumps all the way across the highway into ludicrous. And that was my biggest disappointment – so much of it was just so outlandish a friend compared it to a cartoon and I couldn’t entirely disagree. (Having seen the opening of four recently, that is completely ridiculous too so the precedent had been set.)

And it’s not that surprising of a story. There’s a couple of twists in there and not a single one was unexpected. The writing took the biggest hit from me, in fact. That’s where I put in the ridiculous elements. And the unsurprising twists. And the weird romance. I knew there was going to be some sort of interesting contradiction with Leti and the new girl. Turns out it was more odd than interesting. Though, I could’n’t knock the writing entirely because I learned that the tag ties together very nicely with the end of three. And the tag has it’s own reasons for being awesome.

Still, it’s very fast and very pretty and very shiny. And Luke Evans! That makes for a pretty decent Fast & Furious movie.

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