This was a cute coming of age story with some romance and nice sisterhood type moments. It’s not the most epic movie in the world, but I like all three of these actresses and the film was sweet and I had a good time watching it 🙂

It was also nice to see Cory Monteith again.

The film has a handful of actors in the leading roles, but based on screen time, I would say it stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Haley Bennett.

Here’s what you need to know about the plot. An evil gold-mining tycoon named Bartholomew Bogue has taken control of an American frontier town called Rose Creek, and forces its residents to work in his mines. He’s super merciless and at the start of the movie he burns down the town church and kills a bunch of people who are meeting to go against him.

A woman named Emma Cullen (Bennett) loses her husband in the massacre. She and her friend Teddy decide to take matters into their own hands and find fighters they can hire to liberate their town. The first guy they recruit is Sam Chisholm (Washington), a U.S. Marshal. From there, Chisholm recruits the other members of the “Magnificent Seven” and then they and the townspeople band together to prepare for a showdown with Bartholomew’s army.

The actors did a good job. I applaud the beginning of the film; within the first 5 – 10 minutes the movie got me to vehemently hate the bad guy, feel thoroughly bad for the townspeople, and be pumped up for the heroes to lay down the law. Past that solid set up, the movie was nothing to write home about. Overall, I would say it is just okay.

Honestly, the only reason I saw this movie was Chris Pratt; he’s a delight no matter what genre he’s in or what kind of vest he’s wearing 🙂

So I had never seen any of the Fast & Furious movies, then in the summer I watched “Hobbs & Shaw.” I enjoyed it, and wanted to go back and watch the other movies with these characters, so F&F 6 is where I chose to dive in.

The movie follows Agent Hobbs (Dwayne The Rock Johnson) and the infamous professional car gang led by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). Hobbs needs the team’s help taking down a skilled mercenary group led by Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). Hobbs offers Toretto’s team immunity for their past crimes in exchange for this and entices them with the opportunity to reunite with former teammate and Toretto’s ladylove Letty Ortiz, who has been assumed dead until now but is actually on Shaw’s team.

It was a little hard to follow some of the relationships given that this is the sixth film in the franchise, but I kept up with the story because the plot wasn’t that complicated. Though Jason Statham wasn’t in this movie (except for a teaser at the end), I enjoyed watching his character’s brother as the principle villain of Owen Shaw. I was pleasantly surprised that this role was filled by Luke Evans, who I love from “The Alienist” on TNT Drama.

The movie was about what I expected—a lot of cars and a lot of crazy action sequences. It is what it is, and it is what I signed up for. I had fun watching it.

Unexpectedly, Gal Gadot was in this film. I was pleasantly surprised to see her on Toretto’s team. SPOILER ALERT – I was ticked off that she died though. I mean, it’s kind of unlikely that a large ensemble could go through all this action unscathed. And yet, it deflated the ending for me a bit because the whole driving force that involved Toretto’s team was the chance to bring their old teammate Letty home, but the price of that ended up being getting a different girl on their crew killed. I don’t know, it feels kind of messed up.