Now this movie surprised me – martial arts fights around every corner! I was just expecting roid and road rage!
Furious 6 picks up after Fast 5 and before Tokyo Drift. We got Brian (Paul Walker) and Torretto (Vin Diesel) chilling with their millions of dollars in a country that has them free from the grips of United States law enforcement (because they’re all heavily wanted). The first thing that happens? We see Brian and Torretto racing to the hospital as Mia is giving birth to Brian’s son.
After a successful labor everything is just peachy. Then the Rock Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Hicks (Gina Carano) arrive offering them a job, stating that they are not there to arrest them. He requested that Torretto summon his team, who are all living it up, to help them. Torretto says no instantly but Hobbs shows him a photo that changes his mind – a photograph of his apparently deceased girlfriend, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez).
Naturally the team assemble and use their car wonderpowers to go after bad guys and find Letty, all to get her back and to receive a full pardon across the board.
A Martial Arts film, really?
I didn’t expect a hell of a lot of martial arts in this film, but there’s a decent chunk of quick and flashy fights in this film. First of all you’ve got Gina Carano the Muay Thai / MMA former champion showing off some MMA skills introduced with some groundwork (including a nice Kimura Armlock!), but also Joe Taslim, who had a role in ‘The Raid‘ across from Iko Uwais, doing some nice bashing. These two bring some fantastic fights to the screen, bashing up the usual cast members in ‘fast and furious’ fashion (yes, horrible pun intended).
The fights show off some nice stand up fights choreographed quite well, mixed in with some groundwork.
But this film was also a good opportunity to show off some of Paul Walker’s martial arts skills. As a guy who has trained for many years in Muai Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (he has a brown belt – pretty impressive for a Hollywood Himbo!) we’ve seen slight hintsof Walker’s training in the previous films – the odd thai grapple and defensive guard work while getting smashed by a larger opponent.
In this film we see knees, elbows, push kicks and the whole Thai arsenol brought forward by Paul Walker, looking quite technical and impressive. There’s a sick part of me that would like to see a bad martial arts film with him as the main fighter!
Overall there are a handful of nice fights so I had to review this film. A nice surprise pulled off well. Hell, even Jason Statham has a cameo, hinting on his involvement in the next film – I’m counting down to see it!
The rest of the movie?
This is an epic action film. The whole scenario is larger than life, and as Rome put it in one of the early scenes – it’s not drug lords and criminals, this is some ‘real 007 type shit‘. The leader of the baddies is an ex military ‘Mr. Awesome’ with a team of highly impressive fighters implementing a strategy that seem to run rings around our heavy footed heroes.
There’s less car racing but still plenty of car action as there are lots of exciting chases and explosions – just what you’d expect from the big budget action movies.
The story itself is all action, but there’s the theme of family and the convergance of the previous 5 films, especially bringing the events of Tokyo Drift into place at the end of the film. Furious 6 wraps things up nicely, but 7 is going to be the full stop – I can’t see what else they’d want to milk from this franchise. They hit a winner with this one in my books, as a lot of the previous films were pretty ‘meh’, so hopefully they don’t overdo it next time.
The Verdict?
The presence of martial arts, The Rock, and a much grander scale make this movie the strongest in the franchise (I always preferred Tokyo Drift before I saw this film!). If you get a chance, I recommend seeing it.
On Blu Ray –
Region A (US & Canada)
Fast & Furious 6 (Limited Edition Packaging)
Region B (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe etc)
Fast & Furious : The 6 Movie Collection [Blu-ray]
Region Free (Plays Anywhere)
Fast & Furious 6 [Blu-ray] [Region Free]
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
Fast & Furious 6
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Fast & Furious 6 [DVD]
Fast & Furious : The 6 Movie Collection [DVD]
Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
Not Yet!
