If the first five in the "Fast & Furious" franchise didn't quite do it for you, the sixth installment might just feel a bit like bashing your head against the wall for two straight hours, with no exits in sight and far too many car wrecks to sit through.
Like the rest of the series, "Fast & Furious 6" doesn't apologize for being exactly what it is - a loud, thinly-plotted catastrophe of chaos that has one or two more clunky lines from Paul Walker than any movie actually needs. But beneath the muscles and the screeching tires, there is still a great deal of skill in keeping the action hurdling forward without completely jumping the shark, which makes "Fast & Furious 6" enjoyable for the same reasons you might stop on a Steven Seagal movie while flipping through the channels.
If you don't know what you're in for at this point with a movie titled "Fast & Furious 6," perhaps mainstream action movies just aren't for you. At the start, our heroes are living it up following their bang-up job on the Rio heist, giving us chances to see how Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker), Mia (Jordana Brewster) and the rest of the gang spends their time when they aren't doing dangerous things for vast sums of money. All seems to be going exactly as planned, though there is a change of course when a terrorist plot targets a Russian convey and Diplomatic Security Service agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) realizes he has a tough task ahead of him. Luckily he knows how to get in touch with Dom, who Hobbs sees as the X-factor in bringing in a dangerous criminal named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). This sounds like raw deal for Dom, particularly now that he's enjoying his retirement. But in a stunning twist, Hobbs also has proof that Dom's ex-girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) isn't actually dead, sparking Dom's interest and helping him rally the rest of the team.
And so we're off on another deadly mission with personal stakes and sky-high consequences, only this time the crew is chasing down an ultra-violent former special forces' agent hell-bent on destruction. Dom may seem a bit under-qualified, but nevermind. "Fast & Furious 6" isn't exactly about story building, and soon we're plunged heedlessly into the thick of the action. Not only does the plot find an excuse for a high-speed chase involving a military tank, but it takes it up a notch by bringing planes into the fold as well. How, you might ask, would a crew of street car racers manage to keep a plane from taking off? "Fast & Furious 6" may not have a good answer, but it has an answer. No matter how silly and ludicrous it gets, though, "Fast & Furious 6" does actually manage to hold on from the brink of complete cinematic mockery. Director Justin Lin, a veteran of the franchise, knows that audiences come out to see how crazy the action can get while keeping at least a shred of credibility.
The action sequences do get a little redundant, but they're pulled together with an all-out intensity that makes them easy to enjoy on a very basic level. When the good guys are trying to derail a tank or hold down a plane, all while limiting the carnage to keep it PG-13, you may not believe anything that's going on, but you would be excused for rooting one way or another.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson also shows that he's been a good addition to the franchise and is a natural fit with the unapologetically tough-guy material. Johnson may not have too much of a chance to shine here, but he does just enough to remind us that he's a signature role away from being a major action star. If there is a significant downside outside of the expectedly absurdly plot, it's in the lack of imagination with the bad guy. Here we get a fairly obvious retread of other villains we've seen a dozen times over - another former elite soldier who is now disgruntled and peeved. Luke Evans does what he can with the role and is convincing enough at times, though this isn't a film that's going to work in a great deal of nuance.
With action sequels, a great villain can cover up a lot of blemishes, but "Fast & Furious 6" is too busy finding things for cars to chase to worry about making a worthy counterpoint. For good to great movies, you need a real level of attention and active thought to fully be in sync with the tone, to begin to grasp the true themes and textures of the story and film. Not with "Fast & Furious 6." Here's a movie built for a firing off texts and checking Twitter in the lulls between the action scenes, and for once, theaters should maybe even adopt a cell phone-friendly policy that allows a little bending of the rules.
While great entertainments like "Star Trek Into Darkness" become stronger in their downtime, building a story with character insight and real humor, "Fast & Furious 6" is far too silly for us to take anything seriously in between action sequences. You can pipe in all the melodrama and love angles you want, but these are characters about as subtle as an H-bomb.
Though some creative action sequences save it from being a complete disaster, "Fast & Furious 6" is exactly the overblown mess we probably should be expecting by now.
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June 05, 2026 16:18 ET A busy week for economic news flow saw a slew of reports being released that reflected the trends in the U.S. labor market. In Europe, economic growth and inflation data gained attention as the European Central Bank and Bank of England head for policy session later in the month. In Asia, the monetary policy session of the Indian central bank was in focus as the country, a major oil importer, reels under the pressures of a weaker rupee and rising inflation.