Episode six in this overcooked cars ’n’ girls franchise offers no surprises, though Londoners might feel a frisson of excitement when watching their city being trashed and raced around in by V8 saloons and souped-up ‘Mad Max’-style single seaters. It opens with brawny diplomatic security service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) handing Vin Diesel’s retired con Dom Toretto a dossier. The folder relates to a ruthlessly efficient gang of military equipment hijackers fronted by an ex-SAS operative-turned-bad-ass-felon (Luke Evans) and also to Dom’s former lover, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), now presumed dead. Before long, we’re on the streets of a grimy, dimly lit London for another fusillade of mind-numbing automobile bedlam, all of it staged with the usual risible disregard for any of the laws of physics.
With its puerile dialogue, daft performances, flat comic repartee and ear-rupturingly loud sound levels, the experience of watching ‘Fast & Furious 6’ is like listening to death metal pour out of 500-watt speakers while being strapped to a pneumatic drill. Apart from Diesel’s likeably mild-mannered persona, there’s little here that we haven’t seen before.