Film / Fast & Furious 6

Spoilers for all The Fast and the Furious movies preceding this one, including Fast Five will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

"You don't turn your back on family, even when they do."

— Dominic Toretto

Fast & Furious 6 is the sixth installment in The Fast and the Furious franchise. Released in May 2013, takes place shortly after the end of Fast Five.

This time the racers work with Luke to take down a mercenary operation led by Owen Shaw (played by Luke Evans). There, Dominic discovers that Letty is alive and working for Shaw.

Chronologically the film is followed by The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

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Fast & Furious 6 contains examples of:

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The conversation between Dom and the amnesiac Letty after their race in London.
• All Asians Know Martial Arts: Played straight and subverted in the same scene when Jah (played by Indonesian actor Joe Taslim) wipes up the floor with Han (played by Korean actor Sung Kang). Jah is an experienced martial artist, while Han is not and just tries to use Good Old Fisticuffs.
• Amnesiac Lover: Letty to Dom.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Letty still drives the same way she did before she got amnesia, and in spite of working for Shaw since she got out of the hospital, she has a distaste for his methods, which eventually drives her to abandon him for Dom. At the end, while she still doesn't have her memory back, she comments that being at a barbeque with the rest of the family feels like home.
• Artistic License – Geography: The film features a NATO base in a coastal region or city named on the screen as "Lusitania, Spain". Lusitania was a name for a land of ancient Hispania (roughly covering eastern Portugal and western Extremadura) that ceased being used with the fall of the Roman Empire, and is nowadays solely used to refer to Portugal as a poetic license. This would have been so bizarre to Spanish audiences that it had to be changed in their dub, where Lusitania is just the codename of the base instead; no word is given there about where is it located, although, given that the scenes were filmed in Canary Islands and it shows in its arid terrains, it could be mercifully assumed that it is there.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • When Dom saves Letty at the end of the tank chase, he catches her in mid-air and continues on the same trajectory as he had before. Considering the law of conservation of momentum, the only way it makes sense is if the weight difference between Dom and Letty was so vast that her mass is negligible compared to his. The devil in the details might be that, as well as certainly weighing almost twice as much as her, Dom was moving considerably faster than Letty, so he would have had enough momentum to cancel hers, but the whole move would still being a veritable miracle (which is ironically lampshaded in-universe by both Dom and Letty afterwards).
  • Multiple fistfights happen within the cargo hold of a plane in midst of takeoff, but they suffer little to nothing of the lineal momentum they should be experiencing due to the plane's movement. Especially blatant is that Riley performs an airborn 540 kick on Letty, yet somehow lands perfectly in front of her instead of getting ejected through the open cargo hold back door at their back at the very moment her feet left the ground.
• Ax-Crazy: Shaw takes blood-chilling pleasure in crushing dozens of innocent civilians under his tank in his rampage across the Spanish freeway, made doubly disturbing by the fact that it wasn't even a necessary maneuver to flee from Dom's crew.
• Badass Boast: During the credits, we get this small, but just as badass one from a unlikely source, unlikely meaning you didn't see it coming.
  Deckard Shaw (Owen Shaw's older brother): Dominic Toretto, You don't know me... (The car he crashed into explodes, killing Han.) ... But you're about to.
• Bash Brothers: Dom with Inspector Hobbs. Fighting each other/side by side has literally knocked a brotherly respect and admiration into each other.
• Batman Gambit: At the start of the third act, one of Shaw's men is caught trying to sneak into the base where the last piece of the MacGuffin is located, prompting Hobbs to move it to a more secure location. This is what Shaw wanted - so long as he knew when the transport was going to happen, it would be easier to rob a transport convoy than an Army base.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: After the first attempt to take down Shaw goes horribly for the heroes, with their cars being flipped and totaled this way and that through buildings, they rendezvous back at HQ with nary a scratch on any of them.
• Big Bad: Owen Shaw is the leader of the mercenary group.
• Big Eater: Roman's the only person to be frequenting the vending machine in DSS' field operations base in London (even after Hobbs blasted it open with his Hand Cannon). In the epilogue, he immediately reaches for the potato chips, prompting Brian to rat him into saying mealtime grace for the crew.
• Big "NO!": Han when Gisele falls to her death to save Han from getting killed by one of Owen Shaw's henchmen.
• Bittersweet Ending: Owen is stopped and Letty, though still suffering amnesia, rejoins Dom and he finally allowed to go home as part of the deal he made with Hobbs, exonerated of his crimes along with the rest of the crew. However Gisele dies in the final battle to the heartbreak of Han who finally makes good on his word to go back home to Tokyo. Only for Owen's brother, Deckard, to kill him during his escape from the Yakuza in Tokyo Drift and phone Dom not long afterwards to inform him he's coming for him. Later subverted, when F9 reveals that Han merely faked his own death and is pretty much alive, and Fast X reveals that Gisele's alive as well.
• Brick Joke: Brian breaking Stasiak's nose - having done so in the fourth film, he does it again in this one in order to get him thrown into solitary so he can find Braga.
• Call-Back: The Credits Montage for the opening is a compilation of scenes going in chronological order from 1-5, except for Tokyo Drift which, considering plot continuity, has yet to happen.
• The Cameo: British singer Rita Ora as the race caller in the London race.
• Car Cushion: Dom and Letty land unharmed on a car after the stunt mentioned above under Artistic License – Physics.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Owen Shaw tells about his older brother and his code. During the credits, Han's death from Tokyo Drift, which takes place after movies 4-6 is shown again, but it's revealed not only that Owen's brother, Deckard, is behind the death, but now he's now targeting Dom's crew in revenge, leaving a Sequel Hook.
• Cold Sniper: Adolphson is an unemotional killer whose good with a rifle.
• Continuity Nod: The following dialogue, referencing the well-established fact that Dom prefers old-school American muscle cars while Brian favors Japanese imports. In particular, Dom seems to have a thing for Dodge Chargers while Brian likes Nissan Skylines.
  Dom: (To his young nephew) First car better be a Charger, Jack.
  Brian: (To Dom)...you mean Skyline.
• Conveniently Empty Roads:
  • Downplayed and justified during the London chase, which takes place at night.
  • Refreshingly averted during the tank chase, as the cars of several innocent bystanders are destroyed in the chaos.
• Cool Plane: Roman is seen onboard a private jet with the words "IT'S ROMAN, BITCHES!" plastered on the rudder.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Roman, Han, and two cops vs Jah. Two minutes later Jah walks off without a scratch on him after wiping the floor with them.
• Damsel in Distress: Mia gets kidnapped by Owen Shaw and the team has to rescue her by hijacking a plane.
• Demoted to Extra: Elena stays back to help care for Brian and Mia's son and only appears in the beginning and the end of the film.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: Mia is downgraded into a dutiful housewife and mother starting on Fast & Furious 6, being absent for most of the film until the climax, where she serves as a Damsel in Distress.
• Designated Girl Fight: Not one, but two Riley vs. Letty fights. Unsurprisingly not played for Fanservice, given the actresses' reputations.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • The SUV Owen Shaw is in hits a barrier at the back of the cargo plane that the final action scene takes place in as the aircraft is taking off. Since he doesn't have a seat-belt on, he goes flying through the front window and out the back of the plane, falling several hundred feet onto the runway. Retconned as having survived but been put in a coma in the next film, however.
  • Gisele also falls out of the plane in a Heroic Sacrifice moment and is assumed dead by the others, although some fans question this, especially given that Shaw went through much worse and is revealed to have survived in the sequel, and no body is shown. Fast X reveals that she's indeed alive.
• Dumb Muscle: Although he probably can break a neck with three fingers, Klaus resorts mostly to simpler tactics like throwing and punching around. Not that it isn't effective, however.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Gisele successfully shoots the bad guy while falling to her death.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Jason Statham during the credits as Deckard Shaw, the villain of the next film.
• Easy Amnesia: Averted; at the end Letty is still unable to remember anything before her "death", and makes the Heel–Face Turn on her own.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Although Jah ultimately shares Shaw's ruthless pragmatism, he is visibly affected by Ivory's death.
• Everyone Has Standards: Dom and the team will be the first to admit that they're not heroes or saints, but even they're horrified enough by Shaw's vicious crushing of innocent civilians under his tank that they deliberately change battle formation to protect said civilians from the psychopath's rampaging tank. Letty exhibiting these same standards by criticizing Shaw while in the tank with him as a member of his crew is a quick hint that her time as a heel is soon to be over.
• Evil Counterpart: The entire bad guy roster. Aggressively lampshaded by Roman for laughs.
• Face–Heel Turn: Letty looks to have undergone one during her time of Faking the Dead. Subverted as it turns out she lost her memory after the crash, and Shaw took her in when he realized she had amnesia. Even with no memory, Letty shows genuine disgust at Shaw's callousness towards losing his own men and eventually reunites with the team
• First Girl Wins: Letty and Dom get back together after she leaves Shaw's crew.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Shaw is trying to collect various items he needs to build the Nightshade while Dom and Hobbs are trying to stop him.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Owen's crew comes from many parts of the world, and the car chase scene at the beginning has the members talk to each other with their native languages. An example is the Indonesian Jah asking Vegh, "Hantam mereka" (which is subtitled "I need your help," but actually means "Hit them").
• Heroic BSoD: Han falls into one after Gisele sacrifices herself to save him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gisele lets herself fall to her death to save Han from an attacker in the climax.
• Hypocrite:
  • The base commander says, quite logically, that the threat to one life is not worth giving up the chip that would endanger the lives of millions. However, when his life is then threatened, he orders all his men to stand down and lets the bad guys go.
  • Owen himself becomes one when he taunts Dom and his crew just before the climax of the film. His men have taken Mia hostage and he gloats that they were never in the game to begin with. However, earlier in the film he criticized one of his henchmen for underestimating them and calling them "common criminals", saying they should treat them with respect or else it would weaken their team. Sure enough, the second Owen starts underestimating Dom's team and disrespects them, his whole crew is taken down.
• Indy Ploy: Dom smashing his car into a barrier in order to launch himself and perfectly catch a falling Letty across a highway. He himself admits the only reason they survived was pure luck.
• Irony: Of the tragic kind. Gisele sacrifies herself to save Han, except her death is exactly what motivates Han to finally move to Japan where we all know he dies.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Dom seemingly gives up his chance at freedom when he's forced to choose between it and saving his sister. But don't think he's an idiot; it turns out he had one more trick up his sleeve, and he uses it to take the upper hand against Shaw, so that he could have his cake and eat it.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Letty repays Riley's betrayal via a speargun to the gut which also throws her out the moving plane.
• It's All My Fault: Brian says this verbatim after finding out Shaw told Braga that Letty was an informant in 4, setting her up to die.
  Braga: The minute you put her undercover, she was dead, bro.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Elena urges Dom to join Hobbs' investigation so he can learn if Letty is indeed alive. When this turns out to be true, Elena allows the two of them to be reunited and presumably returns to her career in law enforcement a single woman.
• Kick the Dog: While driving a tank Shaw decides to go on a civilian-crushing rampage on the bridge.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Despite their 2-to-1 advantage, Jah wipes the floor with Han and Roman, prompting the latter to say that "no one needs to know about this."
• MacGuffin: The Nightshade device. It's only mentioned once or twice and has something to do with stopping electrical power.
• Made of Iron: Multiple characters go through horrendous car crashes without any major injury.
• The Man Behind the Man: Owen Shaw is revealed to be the one behind Arturo Braga, the drug lord from 4 which explains how Letty ended up in his employ.
• The Mole: Riley.
• Multi-Track Drifting: The heroes are driving their usual muscle cars when they suddenly discover that their opponent is driving a tank.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In the case of a vehicle doing this, the tank would count. It's an actual 10-ton tank on an actual freeway plowing through cars like nothing. They also modified the tank to go 60 MPH, when it originally can only go 30 MPH.
• Oh, Crap!: When Tej sees the tank Shaw's crew has just hijacked from the convoy.
  Tej: Uh guys, we got to come up with another plan... they got a tank.
  Roman: I'm sorry, did somebody just say a tank?!
• One-Man Army: Jah, the martial artist working for Shaw. He was able to take down a dozen London Policemen at Waterloo Station, then wipe the floor with both Roman and Han double teaming him.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Letty shoots Dom in the shoulder. He just digs the bullet out by himself, slaps a bandage on top and acts the rest of the film as if it never even happened. Semi-justified as the pistol is noted to be a PSM, a Russian handgun infamous for its anemic 5.45mmm round.
• Only in It for the Money: Averted when Roman drops everything as soon as he hears the others need help. Of course after he hears what the group is needed for, he asks Brian "We getting paid, right?"
• Outrun the Fireball: In the trailer, Dom jumps out of the on-fire plane.
• Power Fist: Letty uses a pair of handcuffs as improvised brass knuckles while fighting Riley.
• Precision F-Strike: Rome drops one right on target. "When a woman starts shootin' at you, that's a clear sign to back the fuck off."
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Letty delivers one to Riley before shooting her out of a plane with a harpoon gun.
  Wrong team, bitch
• Product Placement: Subaru donated the new BRZ. Likewise, the Mito seen during the climax scene was supplied by Alfa Romero, who advertised the car's appearance in the film shortly before release.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Hobbs forces his fellow officers at gunpoint to release Shaw and give him the MacGuffin, potentially risking millions of lives, because a protagonist that Hobbs had no particular reason to care about was being held hostage.
• Put on a Bus: Leo and Santos, due to both actors wanting to concentrate on their rap careers. This is written off in-universe when Brian tries to assemble the team - the characters are stated as having last been seen crawling around the casinos in Monte Carlo.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Hobbs is forced to ask Dom and his crew of outlaws for help because of their skills and connection to Letty in exchange for full pardons.
• Rock Beats Laser: Since the team's first attempt at grabbing Shaw failed partially due to his being able to hack their cars, they track down and acquire some antique muscle cars that have no computers to hack for round two.
• Sacrificial Lion: Gisele and Han meet this fate, although in the case of the latter, it was a Foregone Conclusion since his death in Tokyo Drift comes full circle, except this time, we actually get to know who killed him. Later subverted, when F9 reveals that Han merely faked his own death and is pretty much alive, and Fast X reveals that Gisele's alive as well.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Roman attempts to do this, of course, it doesn't happen.
• Sequel Escalation: Lampshaded by Shaw when he first meets Dom, who notes how far the latter has come from simply stealing truckloads of DVD players.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: The film primarily takes place in England and Spain.
• Sequel Hook/The Stinger: Doubles as The Reveal that Han was killed by Shaw's brother as retaliation again Dom.
• Spit Take: Tej sprays his drink when Hobbs arrives at a barbecue and answers Roman's "[We] better hide the baby oil!" with a deadpan "You better hide that big-ass forehead." Dwayne Johnson ad-libbed Hobbs' line, so the spit-take was a genuine reaction that the directors decided to keep.
• Take a Third Option: Just when it looks like Shaw's got Dom beat once and for all, Dom and his crew reveal that they've got a few more tricks up their sleeves, having released Shaw deliberately.
• Tempting Fate:
  • While in prison, Brian gets a visit from Braga and after a heated exchange, Brian tells him and his two goons he's lucky there's a door between them. Cue the door instantly being overridden and opened.
  • Immediately before the above, Stasiak tells Brian that he could only get him into the general population of Braga's prison, so Brian will need to find his own way into solitary, where Braga is actually being held. Brian proceeds to break Stasiak's nose, which gets him immediately thrown into solitary himself.
  • Shaw manages to pull off a gambit near the end of the film that got him released after he was caught. But then he has to state that Dom's team "were never part of the game". Not a few minutes after he says this, said team come bearing down on him as he's trying to make his getaway. Resulting in his team being dismantled in the ensuing fight and he himself getting ejected out of a car and out the back end of a plane onto a speeding runway.
• Took a Level in Badass: Tej goes from just being a coordinator and not being able to drive without crashing to being able to keep pace with the others.
• Turbine Blender: Happens to a member of Shaw's team during the final runway sequence.
• Unconventional Vehicle Chase: The villains take a tank and start running over civilian cars before Dom's gang put a stop to them.
• Underestimating Badassery: Letty threatens to beat Klaus down. Considering he was handing Dom and Hobbs their asses one-on-one in the climax, and needed them to team up and the element and surprise to beat him, its very obvious that Letty has no idea how tough he really is.
• Unflinching Walk: In the The Stinger, Deckard Shaw is not only revealed to be the one who blew up Han's car in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, he casually walks away while the car explodes and even calls Dom to let him know who he's dealing with.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Averted. We never really hear what the group's plan is when they try to stop Shaw from attacking the convoy, but it immediately gets ruined when Shaw busts out the tank, forcing them to improvise.
• Vehicular Assault: "Uh, guys... they have a tank!"
• Villain Respect: After one of Shaw's underlings refers to the protagonists as common criminals, Shaw points out that those "common criminals" came within seconds of taking them all down, and says the underling should show them the respect they deserve.
• Villainous Valor: Owen may be mortal foes with Dom, but he does respect the fact that Dom has a code by which he lives, which is why he offers Dom a chance to leave no strings attached. Of course, he's also seems not to realize that Dom's code is exactly why he won't leave under any circumstance.
• Wham Shot:
  Shaw: Coming, babe?
  [camera cuts to Letty, then Gisele, then Letty again before focusing on Riley]
  Riley: Of course. I wouldn't miss it for the world.
  • Notable that in that shot, Riley's the only one who hasn't been shown to be involved in any dirty work of the villains. Gisele formerly worked with the fourth film's Big Bad, Braga, while this film focuses on Letty siding with Shaw against Dom's team, even though she isn't entirely sure with the choice.
  • Not only that, but also the stinger when it's revealed who it was who killed Han. Not only who the character was, but also the fact Jason Statham is playing him and will also play him in the next film.
• The Worf Effect: Happens to Dom's whole crew during their first encounter with Shaw's team in London. Han and Gisele got pinned down by Shaw's Cold Sniper. Tej and Roman's cars got disabled by Shaw's electronic expert's special devices. Even Brian got taken down by a Dynamic Entry from Shaw's dragon in her flip car. Only Dom and Hobbs managed to stay on Shaw's trail until Dom got distracted by Letty and later injured by her, leaving Hobbs to pursue Shaw alone who eventually escaped. Though Shaw himself later admitted to his team that Dom's crew is the first Worthy Opponent they came across.
• Worthy Opponent: When told that Dom's crew was just a bunch of "common criminals", Shaw replies with this:
  Shaw: Tonight, these common criminals were seconds away from taking us down. Show them the respect they deserve or it weakens us.
• Wrestler in All of Us: This is taken up to eleven with Shaw's martial arts mook Jah nailing a dropkick/elbow drop combination on Han and Roman. Also, over the course of the airplane fight, Klaus chokeslams Brian, before tossing him around, then receives a flying headbutt from Dom, before finally being finished by Hobbs and Dom performing a version of the Doomsday Device tag-team manuever on him.
• Xanatos Gambit: Shaw's plan to steal the computer. Stopped by the Torettos? No problem, just have Mia and Jack kidnapped, knowing Dom will give anything to protect his family. This comes back to bite him in the ass when Dom remotely foils his attempt to murder them anyway and, accompanied by his crew and Hobbs, gives chase.
• You Have Failed Me: Shaw doesn't even care for his teammates who have fallen in battle by justifying that they failed because they were careless, which disgusts Letty.

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Deckard: Dominic Toretto. You don't know me. [explosion] You're about to.