TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016)

Forty-five minutes of interesting, WORLD WAR Z-inspired zombie action and over an hour of predictable, emotional bullshit that I didn’t give one single zombie fart about.

Office worker Seo Seok-woo is separated from his wife. Their daughter, who lives with him, wants to visit her mother for her birthday, so Seo and his daughter take the…train to Busan!!! Before they leave, anybody with even an ounce of observational skills would notice that things are starting to get out of control, but no, not this guy. Example: while driving to the train station, Seo notices that a skyscraper is literally engulfed in flames, he calmly states “Looks like something's happening.” Wow…ya think?! Once on the train, despite a riot breaking out on the platform as they leave, Seo decides the best course of action is to take a nap. He wakes up with his daughter missing and a full on zombie death metal circle pit breaking out on the train.  That sounds cool, and it is...kinda, for a few minutes, but not really.

Hit or miss special effects, highly predictable story, twitchy zombies that look like they got ants in their pants, lots of people way too dumb to live, annoying kid, disjointed social commentary that distracted from the story, easily 30 minutes of talking that could have been cut (or better yet…replaced with zombie action!) mild blood, a cheerleader, zero gore, all of the zombies fully dressed, alternating fast / slow pacing, a lot of smartphone use, terrible musical score that didn't even match the events onscreen, zero interesting characters, zombie deer, stupid ending that made me want to dropkick my TV through the fucking wall.

Despite its many flaws, TRAIN TO BUSAN is still worth watching for zombie fans.  The action scenes themselves (while nothing new) are still fun. I also liked that the majority of the action took place in the daytime. I’d totally be down to watch a TV show based in this film’s world…as long as they replaced the sappy, slow-moving, emotional garbage with zombies ripping out necks. And more cheerleaders.

[Not really part of the review, but as an experiment, I went back and watched the majority of the film in 2x speed with the subtitles on and it was fine. I watched the action scenes at normal speed and the talking stuff in 2x and it was more enjoyable. Hell, if you were really pressed for time, you could start the film at 11:02 minutes in. Absolutely nothing in the scenes leading up to that was worth a fuck. And then, to save a fisthole in your TV, just skip the sappy ending completely.]

Prequel - Seoul Station (2016)
Part 2 - Peninsula (2020)

FAST & FURIOUS 6 (2013)

If 5 was where the FF series transitioned from street racing film to high-speed heist caper, then 6 is where it transitioned from racing heist series into racing heist superhero series. Don’t believe me? At one point in the film, one of our rugged heroes launches himself through the air to catch a person falling off a bridge and then uses a car to break his fall. And this is shortly after being shot in the shoulder and pulling the bullet out himself. So…what does all of that mean? It means it’s fucking awesome, that’s what! Logic and reality can go straight out the window. I just want to be entertained.

After making all those duckets from part 4, the team is sitting pretty. Living the good life, but then Agent Hobbs takes time from trying to break the world record for "World’s Tightest Shirt" to inform Torreto that Litty is still alive. Who? Yeah, I forgot too, but she’s the girl from the first movie who wore the giant shoes and snared a lot. Grrrr! Anyway, it appears that Litty has convenient movie amnesia and now works as a driver for a bad guy in Europe. She’s such an invaluable driver, in fact, that even after her boss finds out that she used to be Torreto’s girlfriend…he keeps her on the team! I’m sure that will work out well for him. It doesn’t.

Fast pace; glorification of police brutality; multiple pretty locations (Spain, England, Scotland, Los Angeles); too many action scenes shot at night; Luke Evans as the new bad guy (I really liked him in The Alienist and The Pembrokeshire Murders, but he didn’t have much stage presence here); the longest airport runway in movie history; Kim Kold grossly underused…he should have be in way more scenes; Ludacris with a ludicrous amount of computer monitors; men and women all politely fist-fighting within their preferred sexual classifications; Dwayne Johnson still around (thankfully), but his character doesn’t progress at all…in fact, he makes multiple bad decisions and his overall character grew more two-dimensional in this installment; the subject of innocent people dying and getting injured during the car chases was brought up, but a lot of innocent people were still obviously killed in this story; cool fight scenes that were weakened by having the camera too close to the action; lots of wonderfully cheesy dialogue; breaking a thousand laws and then praying before eating; Han and Gisele still madly in love despite never doing more than just looking at each other with zero on-screen chemistry; people wrecking cars in all kinds of violent and horrible ways and never getting injured; multiple chances to take out the bad guy; the verbal sparring between Roman and Tej getting stale; pointless snobby auctioneer scenes that added nothing to the story and should have been cut; zero uses (that I noticed) of the word “busta”; some truly bizarre efforts to make Dwayne Johnson appear shorter than he really is; a completely overly complicated (aka amusing) hacking device that has to be shot out of a gun to then be used to hack a car via a tablet, causing it to wreck…if you can shoot the vehicle to implant the device, then why not just shoot it with an explosive?

Overall, while I did enjoy the film, I still think it was weaker and less focused than 5. Also, if some of those dark nighttime action scenes had been in the daytime, I would have liked the film better. Still, it’s 100% worth watching for fans of the series.  It's been a lot of fun seeing how the series evolves throughout the years.  I'm hoping for a Fast and Furious / Saw crossover next!

Part 1 - The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Part 2 - 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
Part 3 - The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Part 4 - Fast & Furious (2009)
Part 5 - Fast Five (2011)
Part 7 - Furious 7 (2015)
Part 8 - The Fate of the Furious (2017)
Spin-off 1 - Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Part 9 - F9 (2021)
Part 10 - Fast X (2023)