Fast & Furious 6

Beware Of Falling CGI

Grade: B

Director: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Luke Evans, Ludacris and Gina Carano

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I can’t decide what is more amazing: that six Fast & Furious films have been made (and made money) over the past 12 years, or that (Lord forgive me...) they’re somehow getting better.

For this sextuple installment, the franchise vanguard of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster and others (character names irrelevant) are recruited out of wealthy hiding by returning fed agent Luke Hobbs (the ubiquitous Dwayne Johnson) and his new sidekick (Gina Carano) to traverse Moscow to London and points in between and take down a mirror-image car gang led by a former Special Ops soldier (Luke Evans). The bait? The baddies include Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Diesel’s ex-squeeze and partner-in-crime believed dead and buried two movies ago.

The plot is utterly mindless, and it feels almost intentionally so at times. How else to explain why Walker’s wanted Brian O’Conner went to extreme, precarious efforts to sneak into not only the United State but a maximum security prison to interrogate a former drug lord for information that nobody seems to want or need upon his return? And when Tyrese and Ludacris are your emotive tentpoles, it’s safe to assume the cast won’t be on the shortlist for any SAG Awards.

However, the film knows its reason for being and delivers that to the audience in spades. Director Justin Lin helms his fourth film in the franchise, and with bigger budgets come bigger, ever-escalating, gloriously 2D action sequences that violate all strata of law, including penal, physics and gravity. There are the obligatory races between nitrous-powered muscle cars seemingly capable of infinite upshifting. But wait, there’s more. In one scene, an armored tank rumbles down a freeway against the flow of traffic, leaving crumbled SUVs and compact coupes in its wake. In another, Lin oscillates between about a half-dozen simultaneous fights/chases, including fisticuffs between Rodriguez and Carano—the scary/sultry former MMA grappler who starred in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire—while speedsters anchor a cargo plane attempting takeoff.

But, there’s also enough cheeky wit at play, whether it’s a conspicuous evocation of “007” or the sidelong needling of the Marvel film series when the muscle-bound Hobbs is jokingly referred to as “Hulk” and “Samoan Thor.” With more action than Iron Man 3 and more fun than the stuffy Star Trek Into Darkness, this is a summer movie that gives you your money’s worth. And yes, I feel guilty for writing that.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Somebody say they needed 1.21 gigawatts?

Grade: D +

Director: Michael Bay

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 37 min.

The greatest trick Michael Bay ever pulled was making his last Transformers movie so godawful that virtually any follow-up would look superlative by comparison. While Bay excises most (but not all) of the hip-hop “humor” that sullied Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, he amps up the decibels and bumptiousness for Transformers: Dark of the Moon (hereafter Transformers 3).

As the film opens, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and the Autobots roam the planet as a phalanx for American foreign policy – we watch them destroy an “illegal nuclear facility” in some nameless Arab country. Meanwhile, Decepticon leader Megatron (Hugh Weaving) has been reduced to a desert-dwelling raghead patiently plotting his next terrorist incursion.

Opportunity comes in the form a Cybertronian ship whose crash landing on the moon in the early 1960s was the actual impetus for the U.S.-Soviet space race (this historical tie-in includes a shuffle-through by Buzz Aldrin himself). Found aboard the craft are a collection of gizmos designed to teleport Cybertron into Earth’s orbit (we never really know why) together with the dormant hulk of former Autobot leader Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy’s inclusion provides the film’s lone moment of cleverness when a couple of slacker bots watch the “Amok Time” episode of the original Star Trek TV series and, in a bit of foreshadowing, describe it as “the one where Spock goes crazy.”

Once again the Decepticons and their allies threaten mankind while political leaders opt for appeasement, exiling the Autobots and removing their soldiers from the battlefield in hopes that the enemy will just leave them alone. Instead, the Decepticons launch an offensive to secure world domination, headlined by a rampage through downtown Chicago that does more damage to the Windy City than Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

Transformers 3 shamelessly assimilates the vernacular and imagery of Sept. 11 (Chi-town is “Ground Zero”), refracted through Bay’s interpretation of the lessons learned from the Vietnam War, Holocaust, and Neville Chamberlain. And if toppled skyscrapers aren’t discomforting enough, inexplicable recurring hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) discovers the Decepticons are out to steal your women, too. As Sam’s new girlfriend Carly, ex-Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (subbing for the suddenly sage Megan Fox) primarily sports tight jeans and purses her pursed, collagen-filled lips while standing in front of a green-screen full of explosions and other assorted carnage.

Bay’s literal and figurative flag-waving would be fine if his film was any good. The Bush Doctrine overtones in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are suitable because they’re packaged in first-rate vehicles. By contrast, Transformers 3 an orgy of dizzying, interminable special effects and right-wing allegory set to Wagneresque blaring brass of composer Steve Jablonsky. You pray for periodic flashes of color in order to tell one shape-shifting robot from another – at one point, four indistinguishable silver robots are caught in a Mexican standoff. Bay’s tone-deaf notion of humor is Sam’s mom taking time during the End of Days to chat with her adult son about how to satisfy a woman.

The rest of the window-dressing is equally vapid and useless. Save for Carly's collaboration with Bay’s leering camera, there’s not a single supporting character whose presence would be missed, but there are a whole lot of actors that should know better. They include a gonzo corporate exec (John Malkovich), a NSA ramrod (Frances McDormand), McDreamy as a car collector (Patrick Dempsey), a crazy Asian (Ken Jeong, natch), a conspiracy nut (John Turturro, again), and invincible super soldiers Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson.

In Bay’s reality, Bill O’Reilly passes for a celebrity cameo and a medal awarded by President Obama for saving the world isn’t enough to get Sam a job as a mail room clerk. “We’re pretty much all Republicans around here,” quips one company headhunter, channeling his director and his loud, jingoistic polemic for neo-con U.S. geopolitics. Transformers 3: Mission not accomplished.

Neil Morris

Fast Five

Between a Rock and a lard face

Grade: C +

Director: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Matt Schulze, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, and Dwayne Johnson

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

Maybe I’ve been asleep at the wheel, but when exactly did the Fast and Furious films develop a mythos? For “Fast Five,” director Justin Lin assembles a cross-sectional cast drawn from the franchise’s previous four nitrous-fueled installments, including Tyrese Gibson and Lucadris (2 Fast 2 Furious), Matt Schulze (The Fast and the Furious), and an assortment of lesser-knowns from “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and Fast & Furious.

The headliners, of course, are Vin Diesel and Jordana Brewster, series originals who resurfaced for 2009’s Fast & Furious, and Paul Walker, who has starred in every film but Tokyo Drift.

That said, it is hard to manufacture genuine nostalgia for a vacuous ten-year old film series built around street car racing. Fast Five boasts truly high-octane action sequences, but it crashes due to defective acting, plot, and dialogue. Like the souped-up racers at the center of these films, Fast Five is loud and flashy, but not very practical.

After executing a live-action version of the animated prison-break kicker at the end of Fast & Furious, Brian O’Conner (Walker), Dominic Toretto (Diesel), and Dominic’s sister Mia (Brewster) escape to Brazil to hide out in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The ever-available crime job soon calls, however, culminating with a spectacular train heist during which three DEA agents are gunned down and our three expats taking possession of a computer chip–cum-MacGuffin full of mysterious but valuable information.

Brian and Dominic soon find themselves being pursued on one side by Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), a wealth Rio kingpin, and on the other by Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), a DSS federal uber-agent whose rapid-fire, tough-talking lingo smacks of a cross between Johnson’s pro wrestling alter ego “The Rock” and Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.

One moment Brian, Dominic and Mia are trying to elude Reyes; the next they are deciding to go after him. One moment they are trying to keep a low profile to avoid being located by Hobbs; the next they calling an all-star heist team in the country with designs on breaking into a police station where Reyes is hiding his money. Don’t even try to figure out why they decide to torch a cartful of Reyes’ drug money in order to manipulate him into moving his fortune to a central location – wouldn’t the continued threat of stealing the money accomplish the same purpose?

Lin’s action segments are exhilarating and increasingly outlandish – the final big set piece involves a massive bank vault being slingshot throughout the streets of Rio. In all other respects, however, his direction is predictable and ham-fisted – I counted at least three cutaway shots involving flyovers of the Christ the Redeemer monument. I certainly don’t begrudge Lin for helming his now third lucrative Fast and Furious film – reliable paydays are rare for young filmmakers. But, enough is enough – the good will he engendered for making “Better Luck Tomorrow” is long exhausted.

Fast Five is a cacophony of pretty cars, prettier women, and pretty loud gun fights, which is exactly what anyone going to a Fast and Furious flick expects. However, it’s also the mindless embodiment of American might, both cinematic and militaristic. The byways of a foreign land are little more than a backdrop for imported car chases and glorified lawlessness, supposedly thwarted by jackbooted federals steamrolling local cannon fodder and led by a hulk willing to divert from his assignment long enough to gun down some Brazilian baddie in cold blood, all of it designed to reeve up American theatergoers. For what it’s worth, mission accomplished!

Neil Morris

Death Race

Here's your paycheck...I've already cashed mine.

Grade: C –

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Starring: Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Ian McShane, Tyrese Gibson, and Natalie Martinez

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

How do you devalue a Roger Corman film? Well, in the case of the 1975 cult (ahem…) classic Death Race 2000, you hand its remake over to perennial hack director Paul W.S. Anderson – he of Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, and Alien vs. Predator infamy – and rework the plot into another entry in the increasingly rote “prisoner blood-sport” subgenre.

The sad result is Death Race, in which Jason Statham plays Jensen Ames, an ex-professional racer wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. Once behind bars, he is conscripted into competing against fellow inmates, including a gay gang-banger (Tyrese Gibson), in a series of auto races-to-the-death streamed live via pay-per-view over the Internet. Ian McShane serves as Jensen’s Morgan Freeman, coaching the driver through his own personal crankshaft redemption. Joan Allen, on-hand to cash a paycheck as the prison’s icy, sadistic warden, is caked in as much make-up as Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest (or just Faye Dunaway herself nowadays).

To the extent the film claims to be a cautionary tale about the reality-based direction of our entertainment universe, Death Race is guilty of the same offense as many of its similarly-themed brethren: it markets and glorifies the very depravity it purports to assail. Death Race is to red-blooded men what Sex in the City is for women: empty, mindless entertainment designed to tantalize primordial impulses.

Bereft of a sensible plot, two-dimensional characters, or any glint of eight decades in cinematic evolution, this is a testosterone geyser, an orgy of muscles, muscle cars, and just enough slow-motion T&A to tide you over between the explosions and homicidal mania. That said, there is a perverse glee in the nifty stunt-work and a not-so-futuristic, Escape From New York-ish dystopia in which skyrocking incarceration rates have led to the privatization of prisons run by profit-driven corporations. Oh, and hearing Allen call someone a "cocksucker."

Neil Morris