Peter Suderman Reviews Fast & Furious 6
Reason Senior Editor Peter Suderman reviews the sixth installment in the auto-centric action Fast & Furious franchise. Suderman says it's the best one yet:
"Fast & Furious 6" conjures up a world that consists of little but muscle car mayhem and macho showdowns. And for those who can appreciate that sort of thing — and the series' box office to date suggests that there are plenty who do — there's an awful lot to like.
Indeed, the "Fast" films offer a rare, possibly unique, example of a franchise that takes six installments to truly find itself. "Fast & Furious 6" takes everything that "Fast Five" did right, and then does it more: It's louder, it's funnier, it's bigger — more exciting, more over the top, and more delightfully absurd. In every way, it is a movie that is truly faster and, yes, furiouser than any of its predecessors.
Virtually all of the credit for the film's success has to go to director Justin Lin, who has overseen the franchise since the third installment. When Mr. Lin took over, it was a flagging, mid-budget series about urban illegal racing culture that had lost all of its original cast. But starting with the fourth entry, he made the smart decision to bring back the stars of the original, and open up the series' appeal to a wider audience. Later, he added to the cast former wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who now anchors the series along with Mr. Diesel.
Over time, Mr. Lin has slowly transformed the franchise from its modest origins into a sort of streetwise, auto-centric "Ocean's 11" — broad, big-budget, comic heist films with roaring engines at their core. Each entry has improved on the last, but it's never quite worked all the way — until now.
Read the whole review in The Washington Times.