Zombie Column: Fast and Furious 6

We’ve planned to go to see this movie ever since Steve got overly excited upon seeing the trailer. Now, I hate to throw Steve under the bus, but he was as giddy as a schoolboy on a snow day (and not any other analogy, understand?). Rich couldn’t make it because he ran a marathon that started at 7 the next day and needed sleep, so we took Clement with us.

Trailers for the week were The Lone Ranger, which is growing on me. Even if they put all the action bits in the trailer, it would be impossible not to have impressive set pieces all around those bits of action. People are thinking it will bomb (and it might) but I’m betting I’ll enjoy it. Mind you, I also enjoy plenty of crap movies, so it might be best for the rest of you to reserve judgement. Other trailers were for White House Down (I’m all in on this), R.I.P.D. (Jeff Bridges has waaaay too much fun, and that might hurt it a bit), and Rush (a character piece masquerading as a racing/action flick).

As for the movie itself … it’s all kinds of ridiculous, and everyone one of those kinds is AWESOME! This movie has all the awesome. All. Of. It. From now on, every movie described as awesome will be compared to this movie. “It was a good movie. 86% as awesome as Fast and Furious 6.” Or “That was great! 105% as awesome as Fast and Furious 6” (although don’t believe for a minute there is anything more awesome than FF6).

Particularly the last 10 seconds. Right at the end of the movie, there’s a warning that all the stunts were done by trained drivers, and please don’t recreate them at home (not that that’ll stop people from doing it for Youtube purposes, but at least they can’t sue the Fast and Furious franchise for their own stupidity), and then there’s a scene that sets up the villain for the next movie. And frankly, I have not been this excited about any movie related business in about … well, in about three months, actually, since that was when they announced J.J. Abrams would be doing the next Star Wars. Do you know how lucky we are as movie fans? Tremendously lucky. Also, awesome.

Now, I could talk about how the past movie and this one were about reuniting everyone who had been in a FF movie and introducing new ones (Hi, The Rock), but to do that, they need to kill off some characters or they’ll have too many to focus on. Nominally, the movies are about Dom (Vin Deisel) and Brian (Paul Walker), with the others around them. Actually, I should have said the movies are about cars, because they totally are. Then they are about Dom and Brian, and then about the banter between the minor characters (let it be noted that Tyrese Gibson is willing to have shots taken at him in the dialogue. He’s a stand up guy) while Dom and Brian talk about meaningful stuff. Then it’s back to cars. But mostly, this movie is about the awesome. It’s an awesome theatre movie.