In the Name of the Family

Rating: *1/2

The director is back,the stars are in,and the cars are not just rolling,but there is a tank thrown in. There are races,chases,collisions and crashes,and inevitably,someone goes flying through the air to land on impossibly resolute backs. Dom (Diesel) and Letty (Rodriguez) make moon eyes at each other,and Brian (Walker) looks adoringly at his newly-born son. Letty rises from the dead and grand villain Shaw (Evans) just won’t be killed. Hobbs (Johnson) gets a sidekick in an equally stony and kick-ass cop (Gina Carano),while Dom’s crew exudes warmth and family values.

Make that family with a capital F,the third leg in this outing of Fast & Furious. For,even as they don’t appear to care too much about staying alive,Dom and his team do it all in the name of staying together. More specifically,for the purpose of getting Letty back.

Since Letty who has lost her memory has been co-opted by Shaw into his nefarious plot — something about something,with “millions of lives” at stake — Dom agrees to Hobbs’s plan to help catch him. The reason a cop would hire a wanted criminal? Shaw and his team ride fast cars,just like Dom and his crew do — a good enough cause as any.

The action is mostly centred in London,though you do get a spin through Spain,Macau and,presumably,Japan. The plot is wafer thin,so all the embellishments matter,particularly when they can be centred around scantily-clad women strolling around jazzed up cars.

Not that cars are discussed in detail here,just serving as vehicles for this adrenaline-pumped tale that brakes randomly and screechingly to throw in a guy and a girl together.

You come away with the hope of not having to see again a tank crush cars with people inside,the feeling of having seen the rest of it all before and the despair that you will see it all again. With one

exception — in the jumble of conspiracy theories that could end the world,

Fast & Furious 6 throws in a ‘tech bomb’.

Go figure.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com