It’s May, which means it’s Fast & Furious 6 month.
If you’d told me four years ago that this sequel was going to feature in my most anticipated movies of 2013 list, I’d have laughed in your face. But then Fast Five came along and not only laughed in my face, it jump-punched it into action movie heaven.
Director Justin Lin elevated the franchise considerably with the fifth film, emphasizing over-the-top crowd pleasing action of the fist and bullet variety more than the boy-racer porn of previous entries. He favours non-CGI effects in inventive, epic set-pieces, including destroying dozens of cars and having his actors pull off some fearsome stunts, all to my great delight.
The silliness of it is part of what made Fast Five endearing – but it’s no sillier than many of the superhero films we lap up every couple of months. With Vin Diesel as a producer, the series started evolving in the way that fans told him they wanted it to, and he also made sure the word ‘family’ was used at least five times per hour too. It was a massive hit and Fast & Furious 6 had to up the ante by pushing the action scenes to all new, wildly ridiculous levels. It does just that.
The ‘vehicular warfare’ is just as great as I’d been hoping, with the tank and plane scenes teased in the trailer being just as ridiculous and ridiculously satisfying as they look. Fist-fight wise, Gina Carano vs Michelle Rodriguez is brilliant but not as epic as The Rock vs Vin Diesel in part 5, while Joe Taslim (from The Raid) showcases his brutal skills in a fight scene clearly written specifically around said skills. The best though is The Rock AND Vin Diesel double-teaming this enormous German bodybuilder type. It climaxes with the most epic jump-punch I’ve yet enjoyed in a Justin Lin film yet, and he puts them in pretty much every one. Then there are the gunfights. For big budget Hollywood action, it is massively gratifying.
The sad news is that this is Lin’s last Fast & Furious. He’s going out on a high note – the film kicks ass, but he’s also made Universal billions of dollars, which means he can do pretty much whatever he wants to now. He’s been developing all sorts including a Highlander remake, a fifth Terminator film potentially starring Schwarzenegger himself and a Hollywood adaptation of Lone Wolf and Cub. Whatever he ends up doing next, I’m buying a ticket to it.
Who is taking over from Lin for the seventh Fast & Furious? James Wan. This young man shot to fame by making the first Saw film, which is cool, but what makes me more excited about his taking the reins of Vin Diesel and the boys is Death Sentence. It was a nasty tribute to Death Wish and Taxi Driver that delivered the goods. I’m really excited to see what they do with Fast & Furious 7, especially now that it’s confirmed they’re adding Jason Statham into the already potent mix of modern B-action heroes. It’s a bit stink that Universal was so keen to rush it out quickly they forced Lin to leave the franchise, but it’s still very promising. Bring it, Wan, blow us away, bro!
The most exciting new movie I’ve heard about lately is, weirdly, from Keanu Reeves. I loved the Bill & Ted movies as a kid, but haven’t liked much else this man has done – this is not the blog I should admit I don’t like The Matrix in, but screw it, I don’t. Mainly because of Keanu and his wack ways. Point Break I love, of course, but way more for my man Patrick Swayze.
Anyway, Man of Tai Chi looks really, really good. It’s Keanu’s directorial debut and kung fu movie legend Yuen Woo Ping is choreographing the fights, which apparently number 18 throughout the film, making up a massive 40 minutes of the running time. The main character is played by Matrix stuntman Tiger Chen, supported by Indonesian Silat master Iko Uwais of The Raid fame, Simon Yam from the Ip Man films and Keanu himself as the villain. The trailer indicates an echoing of many classic kung fu films like Bloodsport and Enter The Dragon, centering around some sort of underground tournament where warriors must fight each other with no rules stopping the brutality.
“My hope was to use the fighting sequences to tell the story,” Keanu told Total Film at Cannes. “Tiger has over 11 action sequences in the film and he was pretty heroic. All these [stunt actors] would come in strong and by the end of the day they were like, ‘Oh my god, Man of Tai Chi has broken me!’ And Tiger would be like, ‘Come on!’”
Sounds pretty cool Keanu.
In lots-of-people-abducted-and-forced-to-kill-each-other movie news, The Price of Success looks pretty sweet, and the Zoe Bell film Raze (which I discussed with her in my last blog) was given a glowing review on TwitchFilm.com after playing at Tribeca.
If you can’t be bothered clicking those links, The Price of Success looks like The Raid with white dudes and less blade action, the trailer proudly proclaiming “no wires! no CGI!” as people do cool kicks and dubstep blares; the review of Raze says things like “heads and bodies being bashed against walls and pounded into mush”, “brutal, relentless machine of neo-exploitation” and “Zoe Bell makes a great impression in her first leading role. She not only takes the bull by the horns, but bashes its face in, marrying both the physical and emotional components of her role with riveting force”.
Special mention must go to the tagline of Price of Success as a modern classic – it is simply “Die fighting”. Sweet.
This month in Scott Adkins news, he will be starring in Renny Harlin’s Hercules 3D as King Amphitryon alongside Kellan Lutz in the titular role. This is not to be confused with Bret Ratner’s Hercules: The Thracian Wars, which stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in the lead role. So, two Hercules movies are coming out in 2014 and both look better than the ones that introduced Arnold Schwarzenegger to the big screen… very cool. Also in Adkins news, whatever happened to the wonderfully titled Re-Kill? It apparently came out in December in the UK, but I can’t find any reviews or places to buy the DVD online. Weird.
Only God Forgives, Nicolas Winding Refn’s follow-up to Drive, also starring Ryan Gosling, opened to promisingly negative reviews at Cannes. It’s apparently far more violent than Drive, which makes sense given the setting and synopsis, and seems to have turned many critics off. I didn’t read anything too thoroughly, but they were the sort of negative reviews that made me think the film would be more suited to my tastes. And that second trailer, with the Thai dude singing karaoke, makes my heart sing along with him every time I see it. Cannot wait to check this out.
Oh hey what’s Jet Li up to? Kicking ass in Badges of Fury. Check out the trailer.
I think like most action movie fans, I was pretty disappointed with both The Expendables films thus far. They’re pretty shit. But I can’t help getting excited about them all the same. And I did find some joy in seeing them in cinema, despite their shitness. The third film has Jackie Chan and Wesley Snipes joining the core cast, Mickey Rourke returning and maybe Steven Seagal joining in.
Stallone tweeted that he was curious about getting Mel Gibson to direct Expendables 3, which sounded pretty cool, but turned out not to be the case. He got some noob named Patrick Hughes instead. Stallone also tweeted that he believes the movie “can be better than The Raid“, which made me sigh sadly.
Speaking of Mel Gibson, let me tell you about a fantasy of mine. Ever since I saw Apocalypto, a film I love a lot, I’ve dreamed of Mel doing a combat-based pre-European New Zealand film. The weapons and warfare of the Maori were so incredibly wicked that it could make for a really amazing film. But it’d need to be done with a big budget and a talented filmmaker, and the man that made Apocalypto is absolutely perfect. Of course, he’d need a team of tangata whenua advisors to ensure the film was respectful, culturally sensitive and not in any way promoting his neo-Nazi beliefs.
One of the reasons Expendables 2 was annoyingly bad was the lame comedy delivered by Dolph Lundgren. This means I am not really looking forward to him being a cowboy in a comedic action co-starring Tony Jaa of Ong Bak fame called A Man Will Rise. I am very much looking forward to seeing him in Legendary, however, where he stars alongside my man Scott Adkins. They travel to China in it to try and capture a dragon. Yup.
And speaking of Ong Bak, two of the guys that helped make that film awesome were Panna Rittikrai and Dan Chupong. They went on to make Born to Fight in 2004 with Rittikrai directing and Chupong starring, and are re-teaming for the first time since then in the awesomely titled Vengeance of an Assassin. Don’t know much about this one yet, but I’ll be following it online.
That’s all for this blog. I hope you enjoy Fast & Furious 6 as much as I did. I’m already looking forward to the seventh in this fan-worshipping franchise with the convoluted timeline and even more convoluted naming conventions. Still reckon they should’ve called this one 6 Fast 6 Furious 6.
