Fast & Furious 6

Fast & Furious 5 (aka Fast Five) abandoned virtually any semblance of its series’ street racing routes, retooling the blockbuster franchise into an ensemble vehicular heist thriller; a brawny blend of Ocean’s Eleven and Bad Boys, albeit with less incoherent editing than a Michael Bay feature. The film’s ludicrous final half hour, involving a city-demolishing bank vault and every police car in Rio, was a legitimately thrilling example of big, loud and stupid spectacle. The only problem was that the preceding 90 minutes were a monotonous slog of miserable, repeated attempts at pathos and wallowing in series mythology. Though a few examples remain, much of the tedious fat has been significantly trimmed for Fast & Furious 6, and the fun absurdity of the prior film’s finale is spread far more evenly across the whole feature this time round.

Former nemesis Agent Hobbes (Johnson) tracks down the now comfortably rich band of misfit criminals to help ensnare the leader (Evans) of a terrorist unit specialising in vehicular warfare. The incentive for our questionable heroes is that believed-dead former comrade Letty (Rodriguez) appears to be in Shaw’s crew. Cue an excuse for increasingly bombastic action sequences across London and Spain, from crunching car chases to mixed martial arts fights in the London Underground, culminating in gloriously loony battles with both a tank and a cargo plane.

Film 6 finally nails the perfect knowingly and playfully ridiculous tone for its reckless havoc and laughable machismo, bolstered by enjoyable group dynamics oddly reminiscent of Howard Hawks features, and oft-incredible set-pieces, commendably reliant – for the most part – on ambitious practical effects and stunt work. Large-scale nonsense executed so strongly and gleefully as in this, the series’ high point by far, is strangely admirable. [Josh Slater-Williams]