FAST & FURIOUS 6 REVIEW:

I have never seen a Fast & Furious film before.
I had never seen a Fast & Furious film before tonight.

I thought, going into this film with a couple of university friends, that I would hate it. Action is not my thing at all. The opening, lets say, twenty minutes were okay, followed by pretty much an hour of constant car chases and fight sequences. During this hour, it was almost impossible for someone like myself, who had never seen any of the previous films in the franchise, to get a grip on the characters, and who is who, who is fighting with each other & who is fighting against each other.
A very confusing car chase (the first one, for those who've seen it) had me confused, characters seemed to be shooting at each other without reason and I could not, for the life of me, tell who was fighting for what team. This car scene, along with the other fight scenes of the first hour, really made that experience almost unenjoyable.

After the first hour however, in what I like to call the 'second' part of the film, everything changed. These characters who I had only been introduced to an hour before had me hooked and the development in narrative was at a perfect pace. The mixture of comedy and drama in the story was enough to get my interests back in the film and the focus switched from these fast cars and hot women to a genuinely interesting plot.

The climax of the film comes with a really long scene in an army base. An aircraft carrier is involved and things get crazy. The use of CGI is mesmerising, with explosions happening every five seconds, but the thing that caught my attention the most in this scene was the most effective piece of camerawork in the whole film. A simple focus-shift of the camera shows vital piece of information (this is a no spoiler zone) and the audience of the cinema (which was surprisingly large for a 10.30pm showing over a week after the release of the film) gasped in amazement.

This is a short review, I don't feel I was emotionally involved enough with the film to write an in-depth analysis of it, however I will leave you with some closing comments.

If you go and see this film, stick with it for the first 45 minutes or so. As with the majority of films, it starts out slow, but the pace does pick up and you will find yourself being taken away with this whirlwind film. A fun, action-packed film that solidifies any doubt in your mind that family comes first over everything in the Fast & Furious franchise (hey, I did some research).