Tag: Sung Kang

After Fast Five premiered, there was a lot of talk about the future of the franchise thanks to the scene in the credits. It left many people confused. How could Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) be alive, when she clearly died in The Fast and The Furious?

We will get to that later. More importantly, the time line of the films became more clear.

They mentioned that Fast & Furious 6 (Trailer) would follow 5, and part 7 would be set AFTER Tokyo Drift. Basically, films 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of the series are in the correct order, and 3 is set after 6, but before 7. They also went through a little bit of development hell, where they were going to break 6 into two parts, but thankfully went back to just one film. Either way, the questions you have at the end of 6 will be answered next summer when part 7 comes out.

I don’t give a fuck about any of that, because HOLY SHIT A TANK! Long story short, there is a highly tactical gang of drivers out there in Europe, who are trying to assemble a device that can shut down an entire city for 24 hours. That is a pretty dangerous weapon and could kill a lot of people. Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and his new partner Riley (Gina Carano) know the only people who can help them out are a group of lesser international criminals on the run from the law.

Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) obviously refuse to help, but when Hobbs shows pictures of Letty, his love who they thought died years ago, they assemble the team (Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Sung Kang, and Gal Gadot) to find out how this picture exists and if she is really alive. Saving the world isn’t on their mind, just finding the girl.

But with Shaw (Luke Evans) being a criminal master mind, always a few steps ahead of the authorities, can their rag tag group even follow in their exhaust fumes?

Of course the women have to fight each other. Gender equality people, let’s see some. Fast & Furious 6 is being lauded as one of the best films in the franchise, and action movies in general. I will give the movie that. There is action throughout the movie, from car chases, to scenes completely void of cars. It doesn’t apologize for anything in the film, and goes at completely ridiculous lengths for an explosion or two.

But personally, it completely changes the genre of the film, which grinds my gears the most.

To me, everyone felt like a super hero in this film. There are TONS of hand to hand combat scenes between the two groups, and it felt like watching a live action Dragon Ball movie. Ridiculous feats of strength and long battles where neither side got hurt, when most of these people are just retired car racers. It bugged me to no end that they all basically became invincible just for the sake of a bigger action movie.

On top of that, I don’t think it flowed well. Almost every scene I felt confused due to the plot of the movie. The heroes were constantly doing nonsensical things. Nonsensical to their character and to a normal human being. They wedged a street race into the movie that plot wise didn’t make sense (nor did anything out of that London woman’s mouth before the race). At one point four or five of the bad guys get arrested and end up making their escape, yet one of the group is no longer seen in the movie. I guess they just decided to write him out of the movie.

The climatic plane ending is ruined for me thanks to it apparently being the longest run way known to man, making the ridiculousness too much to bare. It also features an Amnesia plot line, which I feel is one of the laziest plot developments you can ever come up with.

Yes, if you changed the movie to be something completely set apart from the Fast & Furious universe, I would probably enjoy the movie more. But we have five movies that are grounded (mostly) in reality, a shift in genre I can’t get over. It is breaks all the rules of the series, despite trying its hardest to include the previous five films. If it was an original movie (and better acting), I might have loved it.

2 out of 4.

You gotta shoot ’em in the head. It is the only way to be sure. It is definitely a great statement for anyone who finds that they are stuck in an action movie or video game! Bullet To The Head takes that message and runs with it, basically making a whole movie around that simple(?) life rule.

Another is to always bring your own booze to the bar.

Our “hero” is named Jimmy Bobo (Sylvester Stallone) and — hey, wait, no, come back here. Yes his name is stupid, but let’s give him a chance. He isn’t really a hero, he is a hitman who has had problems with the law his whole life, all over the country. But now he lives in New Orleans, and just completed a job with his partner Louie (Jon Seda). But when they go to get paid, it is a set up! Louie is left dead, and Jimmy is left mad.

Turns out the guy they killed was an ex cop too. A scum bag, but still former cops have former partners, and his is Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang) who has flown in to investigate. But all he can find on his own is Mr. Scumbag up there, who shoots more people in the head than there are provinces in Canada. These two drastically different individuals have to team up to get retribution, but it will be pretty hard when they can’t stop shooting each other as well.

Also starring Christian Slater and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the bad guys, Jason Momoa as hitman, and Sarah Shahi as the daughter.

Oh fuck yes, axe fight.

Surprisingly enough, Bullet To The Head is based on a french graphic novel and not a dream by Stallone. I had a lot that I disliked about the movie, and found them exemplified by what the men in charge had to say about it.

“[This] is exactly the type of fast-paced, universally themed project that suits our business model” – Production team. Unfortunately, the movie felt pretty slow. An awful lot of time was given to a plot that wasn’t good, meaning tons of downtime in between fight scenes. Half of these “plot scenes” consisted of Stallone being racist towards Kang. Fun fact, the graphic novel had a white guy, but they brought in Kang to appeal to a wider audience, so all of that specific acist dialogue was just for the movie.

Stallone had enough control over the movie to fire the original director because the director’s version of the film was darker than Stallone had wanted. This left us instead with a strange action movie (that had no problem killing/exploding dozens of men) with Stallone trying to be funny while transitioning between fights. Too bad the humor didn’t work for the most part.

Aside from that, there are other problems I had with the characters themselves. Adewale was a land tycoon, who claimed to never trust people who didn’t do things for money. Those are his last words, as he yells them to a man who is actually killing him (gasp) for the money. Completely nonsensical.

I actually liked John Momoa as the other hit man. His actions didn’t seem to fit his character description, but at least he had interesting fight scenes.

I found myself laughing more at the ridiculousness of scenes that were supposed to be serious, and fighting off sleep during the rest of the film.

1 out of 4.