Reviews

OK, You know when you're in trouble when the die hard F&F fans behind you burst into hysterical laughter at the movie's very first stunt, but then again,so did the whole cinema.

This film is the classic metaphor for the postmodern tripe that Hollywood has had the misfortune of ever getting into bed with since Get Rich or Die Trying.....you'd think they would have taken a lesson.

It also is the classic overly used unrealistic stunts, like the ones we would usually see in the 80's muscle films. Classic example, 5mins into the film, Vin Disiel drives a car off a train, but hits the ground square on the nose and you see the wheel buckling.......you blink and the car is back to pristine condition......? And it was boring, yes extremely boring, for a driving film, they're was about 15mins max, the rest seemed to concentrate on developing love interests and avoiding the occasional rabid mob.

In this case - get cars, get paid and get lost................(that's pretty much how grammatically fluid the script was).

Plot - Once AGAIN ex FBI agent and Vin Disiel go about looking for top of the range cars as they're still broke and off the Radar, only this time in Brazil, one last job etc etc etc. FBI sends they're best man, who happens to be a pro wrestler ( but out acts all in the film by a long shot) and his muscle bound team of trigger happy feds. But there's a Rio business man/gangster with all this cash just hanging about in safe houses (how convenient), which they proceed to rob. Yawn! There are many faults with this film, but my top 5 gripes are thus: 1. The script & dialogue. Seems to be written by a middle school kid who is flunking at English. 'You Family' 'We Hungry' ' did yo slap or tap that ...........eh? Excuse me? Scripts....and Films like this (using the term loosely) justify film piracy. If refunds where available, who honestly wouldn't demand one after this garbage.

We get all the usual propaganda about how it funds terrorism and the other political mantras. This Film justifies the murder of cops, stealing cars and excruciatingly bad acting. Please can we have a law in the future which states that actors have to be part of the actors gild or trained to an acceptable standard ( by acceptable, not hitting out with this urban degeneration of English).

2. The cops just switch sides.......yes the cops that have no other goal but to hunt down and bring these men to justice, just change sides and help the bad guys out...............seriously, now get lost. And more to the point, why does the female cop instantly fall head over heels for someone who is in the same circuit that killed her husband, I found it was cringe worthy as the two of them swaggered up to the beach house at the end.

3. The 'we need a team to pull off this last job' Cant we make films about someones first job instead, its exemplifies the person who is sick of their day job, in this case, nicking cars and getting paid loads of cash.....but you can see the hypocrisy there. The team..........totally being ripped from Oceans 11 and Gone in 60 seconds films. The fringe characters from the previous F&F films, (I never did watch Toyko Drift so I didn't have a clue as to who the Japanese guy was. I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type.

4. They manage to rob a police station with more troops on the ground than America has in Afghanistan and Iraq and not take one single causality. Dragging a 10 tonne high security safe along with two medium range size cars??????? Who the hell where the two Brazilian freaks who did...... well, what exactly? Jumped around spewing out jokes with would only appeal to someone with the IQ of a demented Badger. The indoor training to beat the cameras where they needed invisible cars. So the highest security office in Brazil doesn't realise that 4 of its muscle cars, ( yes that's right the Brazilian police instead of Fords have supped up NOS guzzling super cars as basic patrol vehicles) are missing? And then it transpires that they don't need them. But just to keep a low profile, they drag race them along Rio main intersection.......Yeah sure, trying to be inconspicuous.

5. The big happy ending for everyone,......... laughable. Once again the cinema was in hysterics, not at the badly time jokes from Tyrese ' His agent should be shot for war crimes for introducing him to Hollywood' Gibson and his obvious comic relief character as, quite Frankly, no one can take him seriously. The Japanese guy and the ex-military bird just speeding around Germany in a super-car. The two Brazilians gambling in Monaco........

For a team of people who wanted to just disappear, they managed to annihilate a whole squadron of police cars, assault Brazil's maximum security police station, destroy half of Rio, Kill about 40+ police officers and then for their retirement, buying the rarest cars in the world ( always the best way to lie low for a while)..........which government in the world wouldn't seriously just unleash the death squads against them after the above.??????? Hopfully, this is the end of this terrible franchise and hopefully the end of most actors careers in this steaming pile of you know what.

Watch at your own peril

Believe it or not my path only crossed with this film on a rainy day when Quantom of Solace was sold out at the multiplex. I was aware of the historical background to the Northern Irish Troubles and the notorious Maze prison, the last thing i was wanted to see on screen was a glorified Republican political point scoring exercise. Many newspapers and MPs had been jumping on the possibility of the film being portrayed as pro IRA. I can say now with confidence that they're assumptions could not be more wrong. Hunger, is a brutal, graphic and pragmatic interpretation of what the last 6 weeks for Bobby Sands were like, frankly, a desperate decision that led to a slow and painful death, all in aid of the cause.

My two favourite parts of this film, has to be priest trying to give mass and Bobby Sands conversation with the priest and my total surprise at the dialogue between characters. I was waiting the prisoners to settle down and soak up religion, in addition when Sands stated his intention to hunger strike, i expected the priest to bombard him with sentiment and morality. What we get instead is a perfect example of how far the conflict had become removed from freverent religious belief and proliferation of beliefs, the film focuses on the sole fact that it has come a war of extermination, the exact beginnings of which have long been forgotten in the mess and carnage of Republican and Loyalist campaigns.

With the conversation with the Father Moran, i found myself identifying with his character, trying his hardest to persuade a friend from taking his life, only using morality as his last strand of defence. He states all thing unseen consequences to a immovable Bobby Sands; radicalisation of the movement, the recruitment of the loyalist paramilitaries, throwing Northern Ireland into more years of bloodshed basically Sands was lighting the touch paper because he was disillusioned with the leadership, and I have to agree with Moran's characters conclusion that it was ego driving Sands on.

I left the cinema numb, unfeeling and depressed. It was a representation of a human beings last resort for rights or recognition. I would not consider this film to be pro anything, I consider it to be a realist interpretation of the last weeks of Bobby Sands.