Fast & Furious 7

For F*** Magazine

FAST & FURIOUS 7

Director : James Wan
Cast : Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Elsa Pataky, Lucas Black, Jason Statham, Djimon Hounsou, Tony Jaa, Ronda Rousey, Kurt Russell
Genre : Action/Thriller
Run Time : 137 mins
Opens : 2 April 2015

Big wheels keep on turning, the rubber keeps on burning and Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his crew are rolling, rolling, rolling down the road in the seventh instalment of the Fast and Furious franchise. Dom and his “family”, comprising Brian (Walker), Letty (Rodriguez), Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Gibson) have been pardoned for their crimes in the previous films. Now, they’re sent hurtling back into their dangerous, high-speed existence when the lethal Deckard Shaw (Statham), looking to make the crew pay for almost killing his brother Owen, comes calling. With the assistance of spymaster “Mr. Nobody” (Russell) and Special Agent Hobbs (Johnson) of the Diplomatic Security Service, Dom and co. ride for their lives, this adventure taking them from L.A. to Azerbaijan to Abu Dhabi and back.

            We’ll get straight to the point – the untimely passing of star Paul Walker has cast a dark pall over a franchise built on pure escapism. What should have been yet another fist-pumping, all-out action spectacular is now a bittersweet affair. Director James Wan, taking the baton from Justin Lin, has managed to create a flick where the audience is reassured up front that it’s okay to have fun, it’s okay to just go along for the ride - and yet Brian O’Conner’s exit from the series is handled with as much grace and sincerity as the series can muster. The film displays a level of self-awareness – early on, Brian tells his young son Jack that “cars don’t fly”. Later in the film, they absolutely do fly. Screenwriter Chris Morgan supplies dialogue that is as overripe and clichéd as ever and yet, there is an undeniable charm to it all. Surprisingly, the 137 minute run time passes at a decent clip.

            There’s something that makes this franchise very different from the Transformers movies, even though they are aimed at exactly the same demographic and contain cool automobiles, explosions and leery shots of scantily-clad women. There’s an earnestness here as opposed to the cynicism that pervades the Transformers films. This is movie #7 and yet there’s the sense that all involved are still invested and are determined not to phone it in, embracing the over-the-top stunts with all they’ve got.

Wan must’ve broken out in hives trying to devise vehicular set-pieces that would top those of Fast & Furious 6, which involved a tank and a massive cargo plane. Here, we have cars inserted into a treacherous mountain pass via air drop, a Lykan Hypersport sailing out a skyscraper window and crashing into the adjacent building, and a finale in which our heroes are pursued by a stealth attack helicopter and a souped-up Predator drone. Props go to second unit director and stunt coordinator Jack Gill for putting it all together – those cars were dropped out of a plane for real. Unfortunately, as adrenaline-pumping as these signature sequences still are, there is a conspicuous increase in the reliance on computer-generated imagery, especially for the Etihad Towers jump and the helicopter attack. The scenes in which Paul Walker is digitally doubled also stick out. It’s not enough to pull one out of it completely, but it does lack polish.

For all of screenwriter Morgan’s unsubtlety, he’s done a fine job of distributing the spotlight among the ensemble cast. The moments of pathos are cheesy – Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty is still coping with her amnesia – but all parties involved know that’s not why the audience is present. Even then, the loss experienced by the crew following the deaths of Gisele and Han in #6 is palpable and does lend the proceedings an emotional backbone, however slight. The film serves a great swansong for Walker; he gets to go mano a mano with Tony Jaa in two blistering martial arts showdowns. Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson continue to have amiable chemistry as the constantly bickering Tej and Roman, but Tyrese’s comic asides border on the excessive here.  

Jason Statham is a fittingly intimidating villain, essentially Frank Martin from the Transporter series if he had no moral compunction whatsoever. There’s a nice appearance by Djimon Hounsou as a secondary baddie even though the character doesn’t do much. Dwayne Johnson revels in the exaggerated action hero persona the material presents him with, trucking out one-liners like “you’ve earned yourself a dance with the devil, boy” and “I’m gonna put a hurt on him so hard, he’ll wish his mother kept her legs closed.” Ronda Rousey shows up as a bodyguard to furnish the requisite catfight with Michelle Rodriguez, a role fulfilled by fellow MMA fighter Gina Carano in the previous film. The show is well and truly stolen by Kurt Russell. The 80s action icon has still got it and looks like he’s having a ball. When he slips on the night-vision shades and draws twin pistols to get in on the fun himself, prepare to cheer.

As film critics, we hear the “it’s not meant to be Oscar-worthy high art” defence a whole lot. Well, for the Fast and Furious films, especially #5 onwards, it applies. We’re not about to give the cheesy dialogue and sometimes-intrusive visual effects work a free pass, but Wan makes sure it all comes together nicely and delivers what was promised – a really good time for action junkies. In addition, the director shoulders the responsibility of fashioning this loud, brash extravaganza into an emotional send-off for its recently-deceased star. Vin Diesel has been open about how truly distraught Walker’s death left him and we do see some of that laid bare on the screen. We’re not ashamed to say we were left misty-eyed and in that respect, Wan has succeeded. There are no stinger scenes during or after the end credits and while this does seem like a great place to call it a day, Universal is intent on doing at least three more. Better to ride off into the sunset while you’re ahead, but that’s not how studios work, we suppose.

Summary: The spectacle is as bombastic as ever and the laws of physics are as irrelevant as ever; the series continuing to entertain. Fast & Furious 7 also manages to provide some genuine heart amidst all that cheese, bidding a fond farewell to Paul Walker.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

We are fast. We are furious. We are Groot.

Machete Kills

For F*** Magazine

MACHETE KILLS

Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast:  Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Amber Heard, Carlos Estevez/Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Jessica Alba, Demián Bichir, Alexa Vega, Vanessa Hudgens, Cuba Gooding, Jr., William Sadler, Marko Zaror, Mel Gibson
Genre: Action, Thriller
Run Time: 132 mins
Opens: 17 October 2013
Rating: M18 (Violence and Coarse Language)

Dog goes woof, cat goes meow, bird goes tweet, the mouse goes squeak – and Machete? Why, Machete kills, of course. Everyone’s favourite grizzled ex-Federale - matted hair, perma-frown, moustache, tattoos, signature bladed weapon and all – has returned. Following his appearance in the fake trailer attached to Grindhouse and the 2010 feature film Machete, the character is back – as “Trailer Voiceover Guy” (Corey Burton) might put it – with a vengeance.

Machete (Trejo) and his love interest/partner from the first film, Agent Sartana Rivera (Alba) take on a gang of corrupt U.S. soldiers selling weapons to a drug cartel. The mission goes wrong and Machete is framed for a crime he’d never imagine committing. His chance at redemption? Accepting a mission to take down crazed revolutionary Marcos Mendez (Bichir), on executive command of President Rathcock (Sheen). Machete runs into a colourful rogues gallery, including master of disguise El Cameleón (Goggins, Gaga, Gooding Jr. and Banderas), trigger-happy madame Desdemona (Vergara) and her girls, and Mendez’s towering henchman Zaror (Marko Zaror). Naturally, there’s a mastermind Machete will have to contend with – megalomaniac weapons and aerospace magnate Luther Voz (Gibson). It’s a good thing our knife-wielding hero has allies like Luz (Rodriguez) to count on.



You probably know right off the bat if this movie is for you or if it isn’t. It’s exactly what it says on the tin: an egregiously violent, goofy, gleefully tasteless action exploitation flick, heavy on the CGI blood splatter and low on that pesky sense-making. Nobody can accuse multi-hyphenate director Robert Rodríguez and gang of false advertising. Early in his career, Rodríguez envisioned perennial tough guy (and second cousin of his) Danny Trejo as the Mexican equivalent of an action hero like Charles Bronson or Jean-Claude Van Damme, though apparently he had to pay his dues in Rodriguez’s Spy Kids films first before finally headlining the 2010 flick.

“Sequel escalation” is something moviegoers have come to expect: a follow-up that tries to be bigger, better and more over the top than the first. For better or for worse, Machete Kills is consistent in carrying over the style of the first movie but does try to stretch the scope. For example, while the baddies in the first film were a corrupt senator, his aide and a notorious drug kingpin, the villains here are pretty much old-school Bond bad guys: a supervillain bent on establishing his new world order, a warlord with a split personality, an uber-femme fatale armed with a Gatling gun bustier and a villain remarkably similar to Spider-Man foe Chameleon, right down to the name. It might as well be this way, the levels of incredulity turned up to eleven, since nobody was interested in making a “realistic” film in the first place. If anything’s really out of place, it’s a scene in which Madame Desdemona talks about suffering sexual abuse at the hands of her father. This is particularly squirm-inducing amidst the wanton silliness of the rest of the film.



A top-drawer cast partaking in this veritable orgy of base, pulpy genre hijinks is arguably the biggest reason to check this out. To call this ensemble “eclectic” would be an understatement. Leading the charge is Trejo, who is one of those actors whose aura of badass transcends screen roles and into real life; he probably is pretty much playing himself. The beauty of Trejo’s performance is that he plays it straight as an arrow. Considering how everyone else is given carte blanche to cartwheel all over the place, Trejo’s method is more effective than if he played Machete yelling every line and spouting endless one-liners. Most of his one-liners in the film are some variation on “Machete don’t ____”, taking off the unexpected popularity of the “Machete don’t text” line from the first one.

It might be easy to think that the Academy Award winners and nominees in Machete Kills are doing nothing short of slumming it but gosh darn if they don’t look like they’re having a grand old time. Demián Bichir’s Mendez – noble freedom fighter one minute and genocidal lunatic the next – is fun, but the show does belong to Mel Gibson. It seems he has decided that taking on villainous parts in movies like this and the upcoming The Expendables 3 are a way of paying penance for past indiscretions; Mad Mel putting those crazy eyes to excellent use as a cross between Richard Branson and Moonraker villain Hugo Drax. One of the character’s entertaining eccentricities is a fondness for Star Wars; we’re willing to bet you won’t see Mel Gibson and Danny Trejo sitting in a landspeeder in any other movie.



For everyone who thought Jamie Foxx wasn’t sufficiently believable as leader of the free world in White House Down, take a gander at Charlie Sheen (gamely choosing to be credited by his birth name, Carlos Estévez) as the Prez. There’s the added bonus that his dad Martin Sheen memorably portrayed a U.S. President in The West Wing – insert “George H.W. and George W. Bush” joke here. Where Sheen is, a bevy of beauties is never too far away – Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara and Alexa Vega all contributing to the shameless eye candy quotient. Slightly creepy if you realize Rodríguez directed a pre-pubescent Vega in the Spy Kids flicks, and here she is in assless chaps. We are obligated to point out that in spite of adhering to the grindhouse ethos in all other areas, this film lacks the gratuitous nudity of its predecessor. Lady Gaga’s involvement is a piece of stunt casting that doesn’t misfire; she probably is even more outrageous in everyday life than her character in this is anyway.

Machete Kills is so lowbrow that the brows might be mistaken for a moustache. There are those who will view this as worthless trash and others who will go along with the elaborate joke, choose to humour Rodríguez and company and try to have a good time. We can’t say either reaction is totally unwarranted. Oh, and the fake trailer for Machete Kills Again – In Space, with Michelle Rodriguez yelling “eat photons, bitches!” is genuinely funny.

SUMMARY: A second helping of a cheesy, greasy glop of a quesadilla – hold the salad. With Machete Kills, everything depends on if you’re willing to risk indigestion for a guilty pleasure.

RATING: 3 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Fast & Furious 6

Written for F*** Magazine, Singapore

FAST & FURIOUS 6

Director: Justin Lin
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans
Genre: Action, Thriller
Run Time: 130 mins
Opens: 23 May 2013
Rating: PG13 (Violence And Some Coarse Language)

Back in 2001, was there anybody who thought that a movie that was essentially “Point Break with underground street racing” would spawn a franchise consisting of six films and counting? Probably not. The series veered dangerously close to direct-to-DVD territory with Tokyo Drift, but its director Justin Lin set things back on the highway with the fourth and fifth films, proving the Fast and Furious name had legs – or wheels, rather – yet. And if this sixth flick is any indication, there’s no putting on the brakes.

Following their Rio heist from the previous movie, the members of Dominic Toretto’s (Diesel) crew have settled into retirement. Brian O’Conner (Walker) and Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) now have an infant son. Re-enter Diplomatic Security Service Agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson), who pursued the team through Fast Five, calling upon Toretto and his gang to assist in the takedown of a new threat. His name? Owen Shaw (Evans), leader of a dangerous crew who has struck and made away with advanced weapons technology. Dom’s former flame Letty (Rodriguez), who appeared to die in the fourth movie, has resurfaced as a member of Shaw’s criminal posse, and Dom is determined to win her back to the side of good. This synopsis probably should mention that there are a bunch of car chases in there too.

The Fast and Furious series has been given a remodel, evolving from being primarily about car culture to a more accessible globe-hopping action/heist type of film. It’s done the series a world of good, and Justin Lin and company have offered up a rather satisfying summer actioner in this latest installment. Sequels always have to up the ante, and sometimes it’s noticeable when said ante fails to be upped. Fast & Furious 6 does feature bigger set pieces and even more action than its predecessor, so while it isn’t particularly fresh or innovative, it gives the people what they want.

Audiences will benefit from having seen the earlier films, since there are more than a few continuity nods so one might end up feeling a mite lost. The kinship between the various members of Dom’s crew has become an important theme and something of a glue to hold all the car crashes and gunfire together. Hobbs is no longer hot on Dom’s tail and seems to have overcome his grudge on our heroes. Instead, the dramatic tension is provided by Letty’s reappearance. She’s conveniently stricken by that trope of “laser-guided amnesia”, so she works for the villain with no clue who Dom, Brian or anyone else from her ‘former life’ is. There’s a street race scene included as a nod to the franchise’s roots which also functions as a bonding moment for Dom and Letty; a nice way to tie it all together somewhat. The characters are sketched out just enough so we can root for them not to become smears on the asphalt.

But who are we kidding, audiences don’t go to a Fast and Furious flick for “dramatic tension”. They go for the thrills and the spills and thankfully, those are in abundance here. There’s a good mix of heavy duty vehicular warfare-type ‘car’-nage and hand-to-hand martial arts scraps, sometimes happening simultaneously. MMA fighter Gina Carano and Joe Taslim of The Raid: Redemption fame both get to strut their stuff in well-choreographed combat sequences. This also one of those few times you’ll get to see two women (Carano and Rodriguez) violently go at it in the Waterloo tube station completely sober.

The car chases that rip through the streets of London, a tank chase on an elevated Spanish highway and the climactic cargo plane escape on a military airstrip are all exciting and entertaining. There’s a tactility to these scenes such that the scrapes, crunches and impacts don’t feel too artificial. This isn’t one of those films that’s two hours of pixels clanging against pixels. Sure, the computer-generated effects are noticeable, but it’s nowhere as egregious as in 2 Fast 2 Furious. This is, however, one of those films where the laws of physics are but theories. Human bodies take improbable amounts of punishment, soaring or falling through the air to have falls broken by the metal roofs of cars and airstrip runways stretch into infinity – but one should be willing to suspend disbelief enough to get swept along for the ride.

Luke Evans’ Owen Shaw is your typical hard-edged ex-military type villain, whose leadership approach of viewing his team members (essentially dark mirror images of our heroes) as game pieces merely fulfilling their functions stands in contrast to how Dom sees his crew as family. There really isn’t much depth to the character and Evans is a rather bland actor, but it is nice to see our heroes go up against a villain who actually gets behind the wheel of a car which flips other cars off its front, since the baddies of the series so far have mostly been corrupt businessmen or drug kingpins. A stinger during the end credits offers a tantalizing look at who the villain for the inevitable Fast 7 will be.

The film’s attempts at humour are a mixed bag. While Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) listing Hobbs as “Samoan Thor” on his phone is pretty funny, a bit involving a snooty, oh-so-British fancy car salesman is on the indulgent side. Still, it’s nice to see the well-oiled machine comprised of Dom, Brian, Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej, Gisele (Gal Gadot) and Hobbs at it again.

SUMMARY: The family that outraces tanks and military cargo planes together stays together – while never truly inventive or astounding, it’s good smash-bang escapist fun. If you liked Fast Five, odds are Fast & Furious 6 will rev your engine too.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Resident Evil: Retribution

For F*** Magazine Singapore

Resident Evil: Retribution

Director:	Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast:	Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Li Bingbing, Johann Urb
Genre:	Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Run Time:	97 mins
Opens:	13 September 2012
Rating:	NC16 - Violence

Video game movies have long had a bad rap, and one would be hard-pressed to name a flick based on a game that isn’t terrible, let alone any good. When one thinks of the bottom of the cinematic barrel, video game movies are often lining the base, from Super Mario Bros. to Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. The Resident Evil film franchise is by far the most successful among video game films. That is, however, not to say these are good films by any stretch. Unfortunately, Retribution is nothing but further evidence of that. 

The film opens promisingly enough, with an interesting-looking-if-indulgent action sequence shown in reverse, of an assault on a freight tanker ship that results in the capture of Alice (Jovovich). She awakes in a high-tech prison cell as a captive of the Umbrella Corporation from the previous films, and it’s not long before her buddies come to break her out, characters such as Leon S Kennedy (Urb), Ada Wong (Li) and Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) numbering among them. Alice discovers her former ally Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) has been mind-controlled by the Umbrella Corp to turn against her, and unravels a conspiracy involving simulated arenas and mass cloning as she fights to preserve whatever’s left of the human race.


And then it’s pretty much downhill from there, the film proceeding to rip off all manner of science-fiction/action films that have gone before, relying on cheap tricks and lazy writing to shove the ‘story’ along, and concluding with an outright shameless bit of sequel baiting. Whatever life this franchise may have once had has well and truly been replaced with a sense of the undead. It’s rote, boring, and has an odd direct-to-video feel – at its worst, it gives off Uwe Boll vibes. We’re serious. For the uninitiated, the film includes an exposition dump near the beginning, with Alice talking directly at the camera, summarising the events of the previous movies while clips from those films play in the background. While it does provide some setup for those new to the series, it’s clunky, very on-the-nose, and just poorly-executed – setting the tone for what follows.

The Resident Evil films have gained a degree of notoriety among fans of the video games because Alice, the protagonist of the movies, is nowhere to be found in the games that inspired them. This has led many to the conclusion that it’s all an excuse for director Paul WS Anderson to show off his wife – and that he does once more in Retribution. It’s cold comfort to see other characters actually from the source material appear in the film, but the focus is still solidly on Alice and her scenes are even more proof that she’s nowhere as fun to watch as the others. Li Bingbing is so laughably stiff as Ada Wong that it’s not just bad acting – it looks like a parody of bad acting. The Becky character played by partially-deaf child actress Aryana Engineer, ostensibly a surrogate child for Alice to grow attached to as the film progresses, seems like a shameless rip-off of the Newt-Ripley relationship in Aliens, and to resort to putting a child in jeopardy to get a reaction out of the audience is a cheap and ineffective tactic. Michelle Rodriguez seems to be having the most fun out of the cast, playing “good” and “bad” cloned versions of her character, but even then she is prone to histrionics.

The film’s tagline, “Evil Goes Global”, is an utter misnomer. It is quickly revealed that the supposed globetrotting never takes place, and that locations such as New York, Tokyo and Moscow are merely simulated environments created by the Umbrella Corp to test their clones in – so it’s more like “Evil Goes Epcot Centre”. The action moves from each of these enclosures to the next, giving the film a videogame-like structure of multiple levels – a structure that just doesn’t work on the big screen. Our heroes run around level 1 killing zombies, then run around level 2 killing zombies, then have a car chase with zombies in level 3...it gets old really, really fast, and it almost seems as if the filmmakers actually intended to make audiences apathetic. There seem to be no emotional stakes, and while Alice and Co. get into jams fairly often, it won’t be easy to actually care.

All that said though, at least the 3D is employed effectively. There are several scenes where one can get a nice sense of depth looking down endless shafts and tunnels, and there is the occasional blade that flies out of the screen in quite convincing fashion. In a film like this one, it’s perfectly fine for the 3D to be gimmicky; it’s meant to be part of the fun. Ironically though, the good stereoscopic effects tend to expose the relatively weak CGI and visual effects work – you’re looking down a tunnel, sure, but you can easily tell the tunnel is made of computer graphics.

Ultimately, Resident Evil: Retribution is a very frustrating film to sit through. It’s not so much egregiously bad as it is a very, very unnecessary sequel, and it appears that absolutely nobody involved in this project put in any effort, instead content to churn out another mediocre instalment in their sleep. Also, the story goes nowhere, the whole film essentially setting up for yet another sequel. If Paul WS Anderson and co. wish to continue making these films, they had better rethink their strategy, because if this fifth instalment achieves anything, it’s in showing some sacred cash cows are probably better off slain.

SUMMARY: Resident Evil: Retribution clearly displays that the tired franchise has long outstayed its welcome, and that no matter how hard you try to kill it, it will still keep gnawing on your brain.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 stars

Jedd Jong