This is another brainless, witless addition to the series featuring ridiculous, over-the-top stunts and poor attempts at humour.

I used to accuse these filmmakers of having no respect for their audience. But I’m not sure that’s true any more. (Also, I’m not so sure I have been kind enough to the 5th one, which was probably better than this, but which I didn’t like a lot, in part because I had no point of reference as it was the first or second film of this series I think I saw all the way through.) I think they fully understand their audience – whether or not they respect them – and know exactly what that audience wants: car chases, car stunts, some fighting, lots of supposedly witty banter and retorts, and, weirdest of all, this bizarre moral compass that hinges on god and family (but not in that order, and not much god). This movie preaches to all of that, no matter how bizarre the combination of car chases and violence + god and family might appear to those of us who don’t really go in for that stuff. These movies are meant to appeal to a certain type of man; a man who likes to spend money on cars (or who dreams of spending money on cars), who thinks he’s really tough, who likes his women attractive but feisty (or, again, who dreams about such women) and scantily-clad , who believes himself loyal to his family above all else (regardless of how true that is) and who pays token acknowledgements to the Christian god as if that was what that god wanted from him. I know people like that (though, fortunately, not very many) and know many of them exist – huge numbers, in fact. And that’s why these movies are successful.

But they are not successful as movies. The dialogue is not witty. The behaviours of the characters are mostly, if not all, obvious and transparent. The plot arcs seem obvious before they happen. The stunts are utterly ridiculous (though they’re sometimes clever). The fight scenes are fine, but are not clearly superior to other films. And the plot-holes are numerous and often maddening.

I understand that most of you think this is just harmless fun. That’s fine. But I just cannot get over all the little ways in which these movies are stupid. And I cannot find anything redeeming in them. I’d much rather watch bad horror films than bad action movies, for whatever reason, and so I find myself finding these films – this movie as much as any of the others of this series that I have managed to see – more annoying than entertaining.

3/10