Fast And Furious 6: The Car Throttle Review

We’ve brought you the build-up, the premiere funnies, and even showed you how to buy a Fast And Furious hero car on the cheap. Now we’ve seen Fast And Furious 6, here’s what we thought of it. There are no complete giveaways here, but in case you’re worried, here’s fair warning: SPOILER ALERT!

What’s good?

Like Fast Five, this ain’t no street-racer movie. 6 is a full-on big budget blockbuster with more stunts than Skyfall. It’s a real spectacle to watch, with some proper ‘woah’ moments littered all the way through. It’s just seriously entertaining stuff.

We’re in London! Yep, for the meat of F&F6’s running time (2hrs 10mins, so you get your money’s worth) the action happens in England’s capital, taking in London city centre, the Tube, and docklands. After five F&F movies based in sunny USA and Brazil, it’s great to get some gritty British Sweeney-style street driving in there – and some bad-ass British villains too.

While the driving scenes are predictably eye-popping, the fights steal the show. When you’ve got Vin Diesel and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in a film, you know sh*t is going down in a big way, but they’ve excelled themselves here with some fight scenes Jason Bourne would be proud of.

Oh, and it’s pretty funny too. I don’t remember chuckling at so many one-liners in any F&F movie, so hat-tip to Tyrese Gibson, The Rock and Ludacris for some funny deliveries.

What’s bad?

There should’ve been a ‘spoiler alert’ warning before Fast And Furious 6’s trailer. Why? Because like pretty much all modern action movies, the biggest stunts are all shown in the advert. That takes the sting out of an already predictable movie.

It properly slows down two-thirds of the way through, too. You know we’re building up to an almighty climax (it showed it in the trailer) but some of the ‘heartfelt’ stuff between Dom and Lettie (yep, she’s back , with convenient amnesia, deal with it) isn’t so much cringeworthy as boring. Hop to it guys, this isn’t The Notebook...

Normally any Fast And Furious movie review has a go at the acting, but here the wooden spoon prize goes to two Brits. The smarmy British auctioneer who insults the heroes in London is vomit-inducing, and Rita Ora’s cameo as ‘trashy-looking girl who starts a street race after an unnecessary monologue’ is probably the biggest crime against acting since Madonna popped up in a corset in Die Another Day.

What’s new?

Big-time collateral damage. Usually F&F movies look after the public: they might see their cars gets smashed up or have their shop crashed into, but mostly everyone gets out alive. Not in Fast And Furious 6. Civilians gets  run over by a tank, a plane’s crew are killed in a huge crash, and even soldiers in an army convoy end up getting punted off a mountain road. Ouch.

Should I see this movie?

Totally. You’ve already seen the best bits in the trailer, so why not fill in the gaps..? Seriously though, Fast And Furious 6 does what the franchise does best: big action, great cars, and lots of grunty references to the importance of FAMILY. It’s an education for the soul.

One more thing. Don’t rush off the moment the credits start rolling to hurry back to your Ten-Second Car. There’s a twist in the tail that you just cannot afford to miss. Bring on Fast And Furious 7...