FAST & FURIOUS 6 (Rated PG-13)

If anyone is unfamiliar with the “Fast & Furious” franchise, it’s a fair guess that person has been living under a rock or is a captive in the police state of North Korea where American films are banned.

Except for the disdain of pretentious, high-brow film critics, “Fast & Furious,” running strong in its fifth sequel on the fast-paced thrills of underground car-racing, is enormously popular with the Cineplex crowd.

“Fast & Furious 6” is a laudable successor to “Fast Five,” when the grease monkey crew, lead by Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), first met up with the no-nonsense federal Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), a man with even more muscles than Toretto.

Once again, the racing enthusiasts, mostly accustomed to running outside the law, are drawn back into a high-stakes assignment that might ordinarily fall into the domain of a James Bond-type adventure.

Since the Brazilian heist, the crew has been laying low, with ex-cop Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) living with his wife Mia (Jordana Brewster) and baby child in the Canary Islands.

Dom, Brian and the entire gang remain fugitives from the law, constantly looking over their shoulders, no matter where they travel. Previous good deeds don’t get them a free pass.

Agent Hobbs reenters the picture with an offer the gang could refuse, but if they did there’d be no movie full of fast car chases with vast amounts of destruction and mayhem left in their wake.

The assignment involves taking down the malevolent leader of an elusive criminal outfit, one that has targeted the defense capabilities of the Western world, including an American military base in Europe.

The villain is a bloke with a British accent named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who’s got his hands on a nuclear weapon designed for annihilation of the West. Ernst Stavro Blofeld would be proud of his evil ambitions.

Other than the fact that Dom and Brian love to drive fast cars on crowded streets, what’s in it for the gang?

Hobbs offers all of them full pardons if they will come to London and get behind the wheel to take down Shaw’s organization.

Complicating matters somewhat is the reappearance of Dom’s old girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who suffers from amnesia but still remembers how to deliver powerful kicks and punches.

Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson are back to provide some comic relief and tech support. Gal Gadot, very much the beautiful model-type, knows her way around fast cars, while Sung Kang knows his way around this lovely crew member.

Fast car chases take place in the narrow streets of London, with plenty of vehicles getting rammed and flipped in the air like an automotive circus act. Later the action gets ramped up to a tank on a highway chase.

The best, and yet most ludicrous, chase of all involves the villain’s cargo plane trying to achieve lift-off while dragging several of the crew’s cars attached to towing hooks.

You may take a deep breath long enough to realize that this one sequence takes so long that it has to be the world’s longest runway. But like most things in this film, the incredulous does not matter.

Let’s be clear about one thing: “Fast & Furious 6,” like its worthy predecessors, is mindless entertainment of the first order. But it is exceedingly good and provides great payoffs for action junkies.

There’s no sense denying that everyone needs to check their brains at the door. Realism is an expendable commodity. All you need to do is to hang on for a great ride filled with excitement and stimulation.

Some critics have so much contempt that they will arrogantly claim that the film appeals to, in the words of one unnamed source, “the least-common denominator audience.”

I shall wear this offense to the general populace as a “badge of honor.” What we have here is cartoon fun in great abundance. A condescending, patronizing and pompous attitude is unnecessary and counterproductive. Insulting the audience’s taste is no way to win an argument about a film’s merits.

If you enjoyed most, if not all, of the “Fast & Furious” films, particularly the last one set in Brazil, you will likely find this sixth entry to be a winner.

“Fast & Furious 6” tips its hand at the end with the introduction of a well-known British action figure. Yes, number 7 is on its way, and it could get interesting.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.