We explore an action-packed scene from Fast Furious 6 from start to finish.
From the July 2013 Issue of Car and Driver
“It’s reality plus 30 percent,” explains Justin Lin about the outsize action in the four Fast Furious films he has directed. “We take everything that step beyond.” However, that step beyond, that leap from live action to full seat-rattling mayhem, takes people, cars, two years, logistics that span the globe, and a thick layer of technology. Plus bags and bags of cash.
This isn’t the early 1970s, when a relatively small crew could film street-level mayhem on a shoestring. And today’s audiences won’t accept the crappy, computer-generated car imagery that was the standard a decade ago. State of the art in 2013 means combining elements lavishly filmed at locations around the world with digital effects carefully crafted to blend in unnoticed.
Lin’s latest—and, likely, last—film in the series is Fast Furious 6, basically a chase and heist action flick that opened today, May 24 and features what are probably the most technically ambitious and expensive car sequences ever filmed. FF 6 pushes the plausibility of car action that extra 30 percent with hundreds of speeding, spinning, and flying cars. Presented here step by step, and skipping only a few hundred steps, is one chase in the film, from the writer’s notion to the full, finished frenzy.
The sequence we’ve chosen features the familiar Fast Furious team of daring motorheads up against its evil doppelgängers, a mob of ruthless car-mad criminals. It starts with a massive explosion, proceeds to wipe out a load of British police cars and BMW M5s, and winds up (semi-spoiler alert) with a character returning from the dead to shoot Vin Diesel. Because, well, of course it does.
This all started when money rained in a vast, unexpected deluge following the 2001 debut of The Fast and the Furious. It was, by entertainment-industry standards, a relatively cheap, $38 million exploitation flick built to cash in on the then-current import-tuner craze. It was No. 1 at the box office on opening weekend and went on to take in $144.5 million in the United States and another $62 million in the rest of the world. The sequel machine was then cranked up, and 2003’s 2 Fast 2 Furious made even more money, despite the fact that star Diesel skipped it altogether.