Classic Movie Review: 'Fast & Furious'

The Fast and the Furious is one of the greatest guilty pleasure movies ever. Of course the plot is meaningless and the acting is comically over the top and undercooked, great acting was never the point. The Fast and the Furious was about cars. Big engines, high speeds and killer paint jobs. Throw in a few bullets and a few extraordinary women and you have a recipe for a B-movie, drive in masterpiece.

With each subsequent sequel The Fast and The Furious became even more ludicrous and lucrative. The franchise found a rhythm immediately with a series of directors who instinctively knew what audiences wanted and how to give it to them. More ridiculous thrills, more extraordinary car chases, and more elaborate action. Forget about the acting, the dialogue, even the basic language of film, give me nitrous and gorgeous paint jobs.

In 2001 undercover cop Brian (Paul Walker) went inside the dangerous world of underground street racing in order to stop arms smugglers, or something. There he made friends with an outlaw racer named Dom (Vin Diesel) and the two fought together until Brian let Dom escape from the police. From there, Brain went to Miami and continued his street racing and undercover cop stuff. Dom meanwhile, has been on the run in foreign countries, with a notable stop in Tokyo recently.

8 Years after Dom met Brian and the two became unlikely allies, Dom is smuggling gasoline in some South American capital. Dom’s beloved girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) meanwhile is saving up money to fight the government to allow Dom to return to America. It is in this capacity that she takes a dangerous job and winds up dead. Allowed in the country or not, Dom returns to LA and eventually, reluctantly, reteams with Brian to find the evil smugglers who killed Letty.

The sequence in which Dom and Brian are brought back together, a race to determine who will end up in the squad of heroin smugglers that are believed to have murdered Letty, is the best sequence of Fast & Furious. As Dom and Brian battle, the racing scene is full boar, pedal to the metal action and I loved every second of it. As he did in Tokyo Drift, Director Justin Lin sets the scene beautifully and the camera captures the incredible cars, including a 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 for Brian and a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS for Dom.

A lot of plot follows this scene however, and one of the reasons why Fast & Furious is the least of the F & F franchise is that it too often gets bogged down in over-explaining the plot. A lot of time is spent on Dom and Brian being at odds, Brian’s relationship with Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), and the convoluted villain plot involving drug smuggling by a pair of the least interesting villains in the franchise, played by John Ortiz and Laz Alonzo.

There is also time spent establishing Gal Gadot as Dom’s new love interest, Gisele. At the time, there was concern that Michelle Rodriguez might not stay with the series and killing Letty made dramatic sense as a plot driver. However, Gadot’s Gisele isn’t nearly as interesting as Rodriguez’s Letty and Gadot’s chemistry with Diesel never matched that of Diesel and Rodriguez, making her feel like more of a placeholder and plot convenience. And, again, we don’t watch The Fast franchise for plot!

The Fast and the Furious 2001 was described by this reviewer, and many others, as car porn for the way the camera caressed, lingered and leered at the tires, engines and nitrous containers of each car as if they were beautiful women. There was a kinkiness to The Fast and the Furious 2001 that brought the film to life well beyond the very average action plot.

On top of the silly dynamic between Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, two actors better at looking cool than acting, the cars were the true stars of the series and while Fast & Furious became a necessary step to transition the series into the massive, beloved spectacle of cheesy action it is today, it’s still the least fun of all of the movies because it contains the least of what we love about this franchise.

That said, for where the series went after Fast & Furious, I can’t completely hate this entry. Sure, I lost my love of super cool cars and speedy, dangerous action scenes, but what I got has proven to be even better, a franchise so entirely daft that it never fails to delight. Every film series has to have its transitional entry. One movie in the franchise has to rank last and exist as a bridge from one story to another. That’s Fast & Furious in a nutshell, a necessary detour leading to a brighter, better future.