Fast & Furious 6 is a movie with Michelle Rodriguez as Letty. At one point, in an earlier film, she dated Vin Diesel, who plays Dominic Toretto, until he stopped dating her because she got killed. But nows she’s not dead, which is good, because he didn’t like how they broke up. Except now she’s a villain, which is bad. But Vin Diesel doesn’t care and gets all stupid around her. Like when he smiles at her and she shoots him. Vin Diesel does a bunch of other ridiculous things, like jump from moving cars to his certain death and explains it by saying “family.” Paul Walker plays Brian O’Conner, who used to be a cop, but that stopped in The Fast and The Furious, back before they dropped the “The” from the title and back before they used an ampersand instead of the word “and” and back before they needed numbers to tell these apart – basically back when The Fast and The Furious was really Point Break. Paul Walker isn’t the best actor, but he did start this off and since he’s not dating Vin Diesel, he doesn’t have to die to break up with him. So instead he gets himself imprisoned to ask a question of a super criminal about Letty not being dead. The super criminal says “she didn’t die.” I hope that answered Paul Walker’s question because that was a lot of trouble to find out the answer. But, you know, “family.”

“Woman! You’re on my left!”

Dwayne Johnson plays Hobbs, the government super hero that needs to team up with Vin Diesel’s band of car driving criminals. He starts sentences with declarative words like “woman!” As in, “woman, if you keep this up… .” He’s a good guy, but for two movies hasn’t done well stopping criminals. Maybe if he transferred some energy from saying “woman” into crime fighting, it would be just enough to push him over the top.

Ludacris plays Tej. I never knew his character’s name until I looked it up. He knows cars and computers really well. Which is pretty amazing because I would think they both take a lot of time to get good at. He’s funny and has a nice personality cracking jokes and stuff.

Tyrese Gibson plays Roman. More comic relief and light hearted banter. He drives cars and is obsessed with money. I’m not sure what else he does though. But I like him too.

Sung Kang plays Han. He is dating Gisele. Gal Gadot is Gisele. Let’s hope she doesn’t break up with Sung Kang. That might be bad.

Luke Evans plays Shaw. He also has cars and drives really fast. He’s the villain.

“Aren’t you dead?”
“Aren’t you the villain?”

That’s all you need to know. Trying to recount the story is ridiculous because the story is ridiculous and the notion that you need a story is ridiculous. Because then you’ll ask questions like “why did they let Shaw go, after capturing him, just to turn right around and try to capture him again? Like… I don’t mean they tail him to find out some other information. Or figure out his grand plan. Or anything. They straight up commit treason by letting him go and immediately try to recapture him. No wait… seriously. They don’t wait like a day or an hour. They do it immediately. Oh and they block his cell phone reception so he can’t make a call to do things villains do. Except when he was in their custody, he didn’t have a cell phone. So – what was the reason for letting him go? I’m confused. Oh right, “family.”

You do not want to ask questions like this. You want to sit back in your chair and have your eyes pop out of your head. Or like my friend Carol, laugh until you cry when Dominic and Letty fly through the air in the midst of an insane tank vs. car battle. You want to raise your fist and shout every time Hobbs yells “woman!” You want squeeze your friends with glee when Han and Roman team up in a hilarious kung-fu fight. You want to revel in the on screen chemistry that elevates this series of crazy stunts into some kind of fun party time. Where a movie like Transformers is dumb and lifeless despite all the explosions, Fast & Furious 6 is lively, fun, stupid, and exciting. The movie only purports itself to be what it is, and what it is is a blast – from start to finish. Director Justin Lin nails it again after directing the previous film. He realizes we have long left any attempt at real drama and just gives us lovable and principled characters that join in our collective awe of the imaginative stunt work. And his direction is amazingly well guided in showing us what’s going on. Composing miraculous events in comprehensible fashion despite how incomprehensible the idea. Take a car chase though city streets that involves two vehicles shaped like ramps that have the ability to launch other vehicles through the air as a distraction. The sheer ‘car-nage’ is impressive and Lin keeps us in the loop the whole time. This movie is a rocket propelled sling shot of caffeine straight into your cerebral cortex.

“Family!”

I guess this explains why, when pulling out of my parking spot after seeing the film, I side-swiped a concrete pillar, scratching up my door and taking out the side mirror. I stared in disbelief that after watching the best drivers in the world for two hours I would make such a mistake. Instead I should have kicked out the windshield, run across the hoods of all the remaining parked cars, back flipped off the elevator enclosure and flying head-butted the closest tough guy, all the whilst screaming something about honor and family. Alas, I’ll leave that up to the professionals. Go see this movie. Really.