by Joseph Rossi
This past weekend was one of the busiest movie going 48 hours of the year. It was the weekend where studios bring out the big guns. With Iron Man and Star Trek out of the way, it was the perfect place to put not one, but two big, bloated, franchise pictures and have them duke it out for box office glory. No matter the victor, both were going to make some serious coin. Are they good movies? One is by barely scraping by on a paper-thin plot and the charisma of its muscle head leads. The other offering is a waste of film and a truly horrible piece of what’s wrong with the movies today.
Fast & Furious 6 is junk. It’s the kind of junk that hits speeds of 200mph. Junk that titillates the senses and exhausts the brain; it is a lot of fun. I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoyed the film on a technical level. Mind you, watching The Rock and Vin Diesel verbally square off with each other is a hoot. Especially since they throw hilariously bad one-liners that plague this wafer of a script. But we don’t go to a movie like this for Mamet style dialogue. We go for action. We go for cars. We go for destruction and we get it all in spades.
This film starts up as our anti-hero’s played by Diesel and Paul Walker are living the rich life after the events of the last film. Of course, as in true Hollywood fashion, they get thrust back into the game to stop a brilliant race car driving criminal from doing some really bad things. Plot in a nutshell. The film’s set pieces are worthy of a low rent bond. Not classy, just brutal. The finale takes place on a runway and involves a small army of cars and jumbo jet. The little boy geek inside me wanted to stand up and clap. The films director, Justin Lin, knows how to shoot an action scene for I saw one of the best, visceral, joyous, impossible sequences in years.
The acting is serviceable. Diesel is Diesel. What you see is what you get and I guess I’m all for that. The bland Paul Walker and company seem to be riding the coattails on this moneymaking series and it shows. The Rock, in his 5th movie this year, brings it in full force, melding charisma and brutality into one fine package. Anyways, it’s a popcorn movie drenched in sweat and motor oil. Its non-pretentious junk; the best kind. I’m not looking for method acting.
If you want pretentious, watch Todd Phillips’s train wreck of a movie The Hangover 3. Ladies and Gents, this is, so far, the worst film of the year. After an unfunny sequel to the great original, the filmmakers have sold their souls to the devil in order to make this shit. Listen up people – when an audience of 300 doesn’t laugh for the entire running time, you got a funeral on your hands. Not one laugh.
Fuzzy, chubby Alan’s world has crumbled and it’s up to the wolf pack to take him to a rehab clinic to get better. So of course there’s a road trip. Throw in run ins with mobsters, cockfights, strippers and Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong is best served in small doses, aspirin please). Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper take the back seat in this one, enjoying their paychecks while their reputations squander. Zach Galifinakis does what he does best which is the same thing he’s been doing since 2009. He plays mean spirited, dimwittedness well, but enough is enough. This plays more like an action comedy minus the comedy. When I found out the budget for this mess topped 100 million, I almost choked on my popcorn. Afterwards my wife said that me choking on popcorn would be more entertaining then watching The Hangover 3. High praise.
