Open Letters Monthly: Fast & Furious 6

Fast Five was one of the bigger surprises of 2011, as the street race franchise turned full-on heist flick a la Oceans 11 and brought together almost every favorite character from the franchise, while also adding the immeasurable credentials of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to the mix. Now they've done it again, and Fast & Furious 6 proves itself even bigger and bolder than its predecessor in crafting a redemption tale for its gang of thrill-seeking thieves.

After pulling off the impossible in Rio, Dominic Toretto and his team scatter to the four corners of the Earth with their share of a $100 million prize. But they're called together again by old friend Luke Hobbs, who needs their help in hunting down dangerous terrorist Owen Shaw, a man with similar tactics to our heroes. Hobbs offers the team full pardons for their assistance, but that isn't the reason Dom agrees to help. One of Shaw's crew is a familiar face from the past, and while they all assumed that Letty Ortiz had been dead a long time, they can't explain why someone who looks just like her appears to be assisting Shaw in bringing chaos to the world.

Fast & Furious 6 is directed by Justin Lin and stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Gina Carano and Luke Evans.

Click here for the full review at Open Letters Monthly.

Double Feature: The Expendables' Report Card

In 2010, The Expendables reminded us how much we love old school action movies. Even more, it reintroduced to a generation the explosive stars of yesteryear, and proved to be a renaissance for aging actors Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dolph Lundgren. But while we all marveled at the bombastic, over-the-top exploits and strangely hypnotic violence of that release (and, albeit to a lesser extent, the 2012 sequel), The real rest for Stallone and crew is whether they can take that momentum and channel it into legitimate career resurgence.

Ah, old-school action flicks. Where men are manly, women exist only in various states of undress, and the hero can get away with all his misdeeds without any consequence whatsoever. That's the world of Bullet to the Head, the first film directed by Walter Hill since 2002's Undisputed. Based on the French graphic novel "Du Plomb Dans La Tete", it follows veteran hitman and New Orleans resident Jimmy Bobo (Stallone), who has been double-crossed by his anonymous employer and vows revenge. While he reluctantly teams up with Washington police Detective Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang), who is after the same people, there's no doubt that Jimmy's take-no-prisoners approach will grind against Kwon's law and order methodology. But while both are being targeted by a ruthless crime lord (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and his sadistic enforcer (Jason Momoa), they must work together if they want any chance of getting out of this mess alive.

I never want to see this image again...

The problem with Bullet to the Head (yes, I'm getting right to it) is that the movie takes itself far too seriously. It follows a typical buddy cop formula, but doesn't have any of the ribald humor you'd associate with the genre. Stallone and Kang regularly exchange barbs, but they're all mean-spirited, racist and sexist to the point where you enjoy the scenes in which they are alone more than when they deign to recognize one another. The characters are at least honest with themselves about the kinds of men they are, but when there's no potential for a friendship to develop between them, what's the point? It wouldn't be so bad if the action upped the ante, but its obvious Hill is out of practice as a director, as all the production credits in the world won't help you line up a decent shot. Bullet to the Head wants to be a noire thriller in the vein of a modern-set Gangster Squad but doesn't have the chutzpa to have the same amount of fun as that cast and crew had on the set.

This was all the work he could get after Conan...

I'm not sure which actor the film wastes more; Sarah Shahi, who is at least decent as Jimmy's artist/former med student daughter, or Jason Momoa, who is electric but stifled as the generic bad guy who is destined to be killed by a man half his size and twice his age. Either way, Bullet to the Head is the complete antithesis of the Expendables titles. Not one ounce of fun can be had here, unless you desperately want to see bloody action and missed out on the far superior The Last Stand, which has already been run out of a lot of theaters. Even then, there's a much better option out there than the #9 movie of 2013.

Okay, so "much better" is somewhat a subjective term. After all, Jason Statham vehicle Parker isn't all that different from his more recent fare, and only pops in at #7 for the year, not far removed from Bullet to the Head. In Parker, based on the book "Flashfire" by Donald Westlake, Statham plays the titular hero, an honest man in a dishonest business. He's a thief, one of the best, and when he is double crossed by his team after a successful heist he is left for dead on the side of a dirt road. But Parker recovers, swearing revenge on the men who wronged him, no matter what kind of criminal connections they may have. To succeed, he'll need the help of a financially-struggling real estate agent (Jennifer Lopez) who can help open the right doors in Palm Beach, the location of the traitorous Melander (Michael Chiklis) and his next job. The cash up for grabs? $75 million.

In a couple of ways, Taylor Hackford's Parker is a bit like Bullet to the Head, in that they're both headed by violent, unrepentant anti-heroes who have no problem killing those who wrong them. On top of that, each have out-of-their-element partners who really don't have a lot to do unless they're in the same scene as the protagonist. Jennifer Lopez for instance has little to do but be a sexy sidekick, and her presence only adds unneeded drama to an overly-simple story. You literally could have any person in this role for success, with only Lopez' supposedly-insured buttocks differentiating her from the typical Hollywood starlet. To be fair, she does do well in the "comedy relief" department, but then so do most third-rate actors. Still, the action is fiercer, the fights feel less forced, and overall people act exactly in the ways you might expect real people to behave. It's not a bad screenplay, even with its glaring flaws.

Statham getting the ladies feels more natural...

But Parker's flaws are most definitely still there. The romantic subtext between Parker and Lopez' Leslie Rogers is doomed to failure from the beginning (and we know it) and yet we're forced to sit through the whole mess. Michael Chiklis is stretched as a main bad guy, which might have been all that was open to him after the failure of the Fantastic Four franchise. And while at least Bullet to the Head used practical effects to create its bloody mayhem, Parker's use of digital blood is notable in that it's plainly obvious that the blood splatter was cooked up in a computer lab. It's cheap-looking and really takes the viewer out of the experience just when things start to get good.

Yup, it's "Clobberin' Time."

It's easy to see why the distributors of Bullet to the Head and Parker released their movies so early this year. These are low-budget action flicks so far removed from the tentpole titles of the summer Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness and Elysium that they seriously pale in comparison. Add in the fact that Stallone and Statham have never been BIG box office draws (not alone in comparison to bigger stars, anyway) and appeal to only small, niche audiences, and the recent lack of interest in their returns is understandable. These are guys putting out more of the same, uninspired crud that went out with the Dodos and their previous careers. Both have done better. Both could do so again. But we might be waiting a while before we expect anything fun to come from this pair of aging action stars.

Faster than Light

Oh, happy day! With the week's selection of new releases woefully unappealing (no thank you, Prom and Hoodwinked Too), I was more than happy to make action film Fast Five my latest destination this past weekend. The fifth (if the title wasn't a dead giveaway) in the box office-smashing franchise, the film was prefaced by trailers featuring amazingly fast cars, superb chase sequences, and just about every important character from the series making a return. I don't have much experience with the Fast and the Furious series; with only the first movie under my belt (as i talked about last week), and so I'm certainly no expert on the films starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, both of whose filmographies I'm quite okay with not being familiar. So why was I so excited about seeing Fast Five? Well, now that I'm officially a "film guy" I do admit some excitement about catching this film on the big screen. The genre of popcorn action films has been surprisingly weak so far this year, with expected blockbusters I Am Number Four and Battle: Los Angeles limping at the box office. Still, the big-budget special effects of Fast Five looked like just the remedy to these unknown quantities, and begged to be seen on an IMAX screen. If nothing else, the chance to visit anew a series that has already made fans of millions seemed like a good way to spend the day. With this chance for excitement too good to pass up, I made my way to the theater for some big screen heroics and explosions.

Aw, Paul Walker finally became a grown man!

When a deal gone bad makes Brian O'Conner (Walker) and siblings Mia (Jordana Brewster) and Dom Toretto (Diesel) enemies of the most powerful man in Rio de Janeiro, the three find themselves in deep water, as criminal kingpin Herman Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) hunts them down for the secrets in their possession. Now, with the dual threat of Reyes's goons and a team of DSS government agents led by Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) hot on their trails, Dom and Brian decide that they are tired of running. Using what they have found, they plan to rob Reyes blind, and to do so they assemble a crack team filled of former allies and co-patriots to take the stuffing out of the man who owns all the power in the "Marvelous City."

"Car Surfing" was one X-treme sport that never really caught on

One of the big differences between Five and previous additions to the series is the relative lack of street racing, which had helped the franchise identify itself in the first place. The early episodes in the series made their bones with extensive looks at the illegal street racing scene, endearing themselves especially to teenagers and race enthusiasts. There's a reason the films have won so many Teens Choice and MTV Awards and not any Oscars, and that appeal to young audiences is at least part of it. Anyway, in this latest film, the street racing  is nearly ignored completely. Excepting a couple of scenes taking place at a meet and one personal contest between some of the main characters, the racing angle is almost completely overlooked, resulting in something more of a generic heist movie a la The Italian Job. This would have been a problem if the subject matter couldn't adapt to those changes, but thankfully the cast and crew are more than up to pulling it off. While more could have been done with these original elements, in the end they're barely missed.

It's the "gather around the computer" scene, a classic of heist films

Besides the amazing chase sequences, the cast was a huge draw for audiences, and for obvious reasons. Besides the "Big Three" of Diesel, Walker and Brewster, just about every character you loved from previous films has returned, unless they up and were killed off in the other sequels (characters from the third film, Tokyo Drift don't count since chronologically it is last in the series). From 2 Fast 2 Furious come Tyrese Gibson and Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Gibson as a fast-talking Lothario and Ludacris as a tech genius.  Tego Calderon, Don Omar, and the beautiful Gal Gadot return from their roles in the fourth film Fast and Furious as well, though only Gadot is even remotely fleshed out. Yes, I do mean that literally. Sung Kang has appeared in more Furious films than everyone besides Vin and Paul, and reprises his ultra-cool racer here. Even Matt Schulze returns as Dom's childhood friend Vince in a role that hasn't been seen since the very original. For all these returning characters, the key is to make them appealing to everyone, not just the fans series as a whole. While I'm sure it HELPS to see the earlier titles to understand these characters better, I felt fairly attached to them from the get-go. Everyone from Brewster to Omar (who barely speaks any English at all) felt authentic to me, and while Diesel and Walker were often front and center, the rest are given enough to do to not make them seem worthless. The only real disappointment there would be Schulze, which is a shame since the character had such potential in his return. Unfortunately, the script doesn't seem to know what to do with Vince besides being a means to an end. He's kind of like Captain Kelly on Battlestar Galactica; you see him around, and he seems to belong, but the story doesn't seem to have any use for him, and he is eventually tossed aside.

Too late, Dom and Brian realize they're NOT driving the Mach 5

Fast Five's new characters manage to hold their own against the established stars, however, and help make the film better overall. Dwayne Johnson seems comfortable stepping back into his ass-kicking shoes. As the film's secondary antagonist, Johnson's DSS agent does whatever he can to catch the bad guys, and he's got our heroes dead in his sights. It's good to see a man who made a name for himself as a tough guy stop wasting time with family-friendly films like The Game Plan and The Tooth Fairy. He's born to be an action star and should get a legitimate chance to do so. Elsa Pataky also impresses as perhaps the only honest Rio cop, and her inclusion is done expertly well by the script. Only Joaquim de Almeida is uninteresting as a generic two-bit corrupt businessman. He at least manages to prove somewhat dangerous, with the deepness of his pockets and his multitude of faceless minions who die at his whim. There's just nothing to differentiate him from the many like villains that died at the hands of heroes in the past decade. Still, he's the odd man out in what is otherwise a compelling cast.

The People's Champ looks about ready to lay the smack down

The film does oversimplify things by disregarding the entire idea of "innocent bystander" in some of the more outlandish chase scenes, and we feel good in knowing that no innocents are EVER caught in the crossfire. It is this disregard for the real world that allows the film to just sit back, relax, and enjoy our popcorn. While it does absolutely nothing new (and is possibly the least innovative in the Fast and Furious series), Fast Five is honest enough of a film to be avoid being a derivative knockoff. Truly exciting and worth every penny of the ticket price, you should do yourself a favor and see it in the theaters if you're going to see it at all. At parts funny, engaging, sexy and never dull, Fast Five might be remembered as the top action film of 2011. That's saying a lot, with the comic book adaptations of Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern awaiting their turns this summer to shatter box office records. For now, I'm as surprised as anyone that Fast Five debuts as the #8 best film of 2011. Maybe it'll be the last in the series; maybe it won't. For now I'm just glad I took a chance and saw this when I did.