Fast & Furious 6 Has One Of The Greatest Lines Of Dialogue In Motion Picture History
"There's no place like home." "May the Force be with you." "The stuff dreams are made of." The greatest lines of dialogue in motion picture history often have one thing in common, and that's no matter what year they came out, no matter what their story is about, when you hear that line you think of that movie.
Anyone can say something smart or funny — it's the context that makes a great line memorable. When we believe in the characters and we're immersed in that world, we pay attention to what they're saying and we remember when they say something great. The last line in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Blvd" resonates because "Alright Mr. Demille, I'm ready for my close-up" is creepy and weird after everything we've just been through. If you overheard someone say the exact same thing on the street it would have no power.
I bring this up because while some lines of dialogue have entered into the popular lexicon and others are canonized by film enthusiasts in our little corner, there's at least one line that deserves to be elevated to "all-time" status, which doesn't seem to make most of the lists. It's from an immensely popular blockbuster called "Fast & Furious 6," and it could only ever be uttered aloud in this very specific action movie universe. And even here, in a world where every single thing revolves around car stunts — you probably can't buy milk without popping a wheelie — it's objectively hilarious.
Tanks, but no thanks
Six films into the series — seven if you include "Better Luck Tomorrow" (you should) — the story went a bit nuts. What started as a modest "Point Break" knockoff about street racers stealing DVD players had gradually evolved into a series of over-the-top spectacles, each more elaborate and stunt-tacular than the last. But even "Fast Five" was just a story about badass thieves doing badass things. With "Fast & Furious 6," the franchise went into gonzo James Bond territory.
In this film, the Toretto family gets enlisted to fight other daredevil vehicular supervillains, and from that moment on, Dom (Vin Diesel) and his associates pretty much become globetrotting superspies who specialize in car stuff (and everything is car stuff). But that's not the only reason why this was a point of no return for the series, where every sense of plausibility flew out the window and landed with a splat. It also marked the return, teased at the end of "Fast Five," of Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who died two films previously and now has — as if it wasn't already soap operatic enough — amnesia. She thinks she's one of the bad guys.
Dom refuses to fight Letty, and repeatedly risks the whole mission to save her from this life of ... I mean, I guess it was always a "life of crime," but this is less respectable crime, so it's bad? Anyway, this all comes to a head in the film's centerpiece, an elaborate freeway chase between our heroes and a freakin' tank. The scene concludes with the tank getting t-boned and Letty — who was of course on top of it at the time — getting hurled through the air, only for Dom to jump from his own speeding car and fly into her at way too many miles per hour, with both of them landing on the hood of yet another car.
And they're fine.
Car away, so close
This raises a lot of questions. For example, "HOW THE @#$% ARE THEY FINE?" Like seriously, we can accept that people in movies emerge unscathed from car accidents that, in the real world, would rip our bodies to shreds. In reality, even a seemingly minor fender bender can leave the people involved with permanent physical damage, but these kinds of movies are power fantasies. We want to see cool people walk away from dangerous situations because, in our dreams, that's what we would do, because we're just that cool.
But there comes a point in every fictional universe where, no matter how weird the story is or how incredible the stunts are, something happens that breaks the rules. We can accept that dinosaurs have been cloned in the "Jurassic Park" movies and are real now. If after six movies they could suddenly also roller skate backward while singing and dancing to Latto's "Big Energy," it'd feel out of place, no matter how much we were willing to accept the weird-ass cloning thing in the first place. It breaks a rule.
And here's where the genius comes into play in "Fast & Furious 6," because the movie resists two very reasonable temptations: To either never comment on what just happened, or make a flippant joke about it. Instead, Letty turns to Dom in the next scene and solemnly asks him one question, a question that forgives every single ridiculous thing that happens in this series from this moment on, and completely redefines the franchise as taking place in a fantasy land.
That line is: "How did you know there'd be a car there to break our fall?"
Let me repeat that in bigger letters...
'How did you know there'd be a car there to break our fall?'
Take a moment and think about that. Think about the enormous ramifications of what that means.
Because the movie is not just saying a car broke their fall. It's not just saying that a car breaking their fall prevented them from experiencing any injuries whatsoever. It's saying that, in this universe, everyone knows cars break falls.
After all, if Dom had flown through the air, swooped up Letty, and they hadn't landed on a two-ton chunk of metal and glass, they could have been hurt. If they'd hit asphalt they might have even sprained something. But no, thankfully they landed on metal and glass. At incredibly high speeds. So naturally they're fine, because that's just life now.
From that second onward, this one hilarious line of dialogue re-writes the whole series. We knew these people could do cool car stuff, but now we also know that everyone in the "Fast & Furious" movies has "+100 against cars" written on their character sheets. As long as they're in or on cars nothing bad can ever happen to them. You can just casually skim the rest of the films in the series and see how true that is. They fly a car through a satellite in space and nothing bad happens because don't worry ... they're in a car.
For the record, I am not complaining. I think this line is a work of genius, because it manages to be funny while literally rewriting our expectations for the whole series in just thirteen words. The films successfully renegotiated their contract with the audience and now, suddenly, this is very much allowed, and I love it, because it means even wilder and sillier crap could happen in the future. And it did. And for the most part it's been great.
Now that's good writing.