REVIEW - 'Furious 6' (aka 'Fast & Furious 6')

'Furious 6' (PG-13) ***
Actually titled 'Furious 6' (yet advertised as 'Fast & Furious 6'), this is the sixth installment in the seemingly never ending movie series.  This time around, Hobbs (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) has Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) reassemble their crew (Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Sung Kang and Gal Gadot resprising their roles of Roman, Tej, Han and Gisele respectively) in order to take down a mastermind named Shaw (Luke Evans) who commands an organization of mercenary drivers across 12 countries. Payment? Full pardons for them all.  And among those in Shaw's organization is Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who was thought to have died in the events during the fourth movie, 'Fast & Furious".

This isn't exactly gonna win any awards for it's acting or for it's well thought out and deep script.  But for everything it's going for, it mostly succeeds.  The action scenes are pretty impressive, over-the-top and thrilling, even if they do tend to go on and on and on.  The driving scenes are also fun and we even get a few street races this time around, even though the series itself has largely moved away from street racing to heist movies.  Often it's quite funny with the actors clearly having a blast working together again.  The villain is ruthless and a fun change of pace from the series usual villains consisting of drug dealers and gangsters.  My main gripe about the movie apart from the fact that it's the SIXTH movie in this franchise (a gripe I'll bring up later) is that it's too long.  No need for this to be over 2 hours long. 

I still wholeheartedly believe that there really shouldn't be SIX (soon to be SEVEN) 'Fast and Furious' movies.  For every sequel/remake/continuation/reboot/etc I always bring up my thoughts on the other movies so here they are, and it's just a little easier this around just to list them out:

'The Fast and The Furious' (2001) - I liked it.
'2 Fast 2 Furious' (2003) - Not as good as the first but still fun.
'The Fast and The Furious:  Tokyo Drift' (2006) - Tried something different and for the most part didnt have any of the characters from the other movies.  I remember liking it, but I haven't seen it in 7 years.
'Fast & Furious' (2009) - It's okay.
'Fast Five' (2011) - It's better than the 4th at least. 

Out of the sequels, 'Furious 6' is the best out of those.  The first 'Fast and Furious' movie remains the best.  And yes, there is going to be a seventh movie coming out July 2014.  And yes, there is a mid credits scene in this movie that teases the villain for the seventh movie and finally answers the age old question of where the events of 'Tokyo Drift' fits in all of this.

Overall, if you like the other movies I do recommend this.  If you haven't seen the others but are interested in over-the-top action scenes and funny dialogue, I'd still recommend it.  After all, the opening credits is a montage of scenes from 1,2,4 and 5 so you might not get too lost if you went into this without having seen the others.  But if it doesn't gauge your interest at all, well, go see 'Star Trek Into Darkness'.