Fast and Furious: On the Road Again…
See that light over there? That’s our future. Let’s race to see who gets there first.
Rating: 6 out of 10
There are times when a movie ends and you just feel sad because you don’t get to spend any more time with those characters. No more twists and turns in their stories and no more chances for possible redemption, if they haven’t already achieved it. Yet sometimes you get lucky and a sequel is made, then if you’re really lucky a sequel is made of that, giving you the much sought after “franchise”. Certain movies you can look at from the very first moment and know they are destined for the franchise route, but I would challenge anyone to look back into 2001 at the original The Fast and the Furious and claim they saw this coming. It spawned three subsequent films, with this newest chapter opening to over $100 million dollars worldwide in its first weekend, a record for any April movie opening in history.
No palm reader in the world would have taken that bet.
Yet Universal Pictures seemingly struck gold with Fast and Furious and there is an entire pantheon of reasons why this worked. First, and most notable, was the return of the original cast making this movie feel much more like a sequel and less like a spin-off (ie: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift). The two main machismo machines, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, haven’t shared the screen in eight years, so this was a huge draw for people who actually stood up for the quality of the original movie. Secondly, the original teaser trailer and the first theatrical trailer were both cut extremely well, showcasing the scope of the car stunts and the parkour-influenced foot chase with Paul Walker, which will go down in history as a close second to the foot race in Point Break with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze (Swayze throws a dog at Reeves, that cannot be topped!). The third element, which is a little less apparent, is that this movie is an “interquel”, meaning it is not placed exactly in continual sequence with the rest. Fast and Furious actually takes place in the timeline before Tokyo Drift, which is shown to the audience in an early scene where Toretto tells his friend Han, also reprised by Sung Kang, to get out of town for a while. Han replies by saying, “I hear they’re doing some crazy stuff in Tokyo.” So they aren’t necessarily pulling the Highlander 2 maneuver, where they just ignore that the movie ever happened and continue the series without ever mentioning it, but instead they are treating Tokyo Drift more as an off-shoot, which keeps it legitimate in the universe of the characters. All in all they had every element in place for a new chapter that frankly no one thought would ever happen, but it did, in a big way.
Diesel returns to the role of Dominic Toretto, the mad-dog roughneck of the road racing world, who is now running a gasoline stealing outfit south of the border. When one heist goes slightly off the rails, Torreto is forced to move along without his comrades and his girlfriend, Letty, played once again by Michelle Rodriguez. On the other side of the border, bad boy FBI agent, Brian O’Conner, reprised by Paul Walker, is hot on the trail of a massive mafia cartel. When another mafia killing cuts too close to home, O’Conner and Toretto have to team up once again to infiltrate the cartel and bring it down. Both men are fighting for justice, yet they have slightly different definitions for it.
On paper the plot line actually holds together really well, but let’s be honest, no one watches these movies for the plot. It’s all about the cars, the crashes and the chaos. Fast and Furious makes a decent effort in all those areas, bringing the car races back to the forefront of the movie, without losing the sense of needing a storyline. That was one of the things the last chapter in this franchise, Tokyo Drift, was lacking. The racing never escalated, never changed from nearly the first screech of the tires in the movie to the last. While in Fast and Furious, the races did change throughout the film, they lose a little credit for placing their most impressive race about one-third of the way in. The scene where Diesel and Walker have to race each other along with two others in hopes of being chosen for the cartel driving squad is full of variety and intensity, yet later on the races begin to feel a touch redundant. Also, that first race had pertinent meaning for the story, whereas the later races feel tossed in just because they needed another scene of cars zooming by. No matter how silly the movie you still need to make the action on the screen make sense, otherwise the audience will drift away.
Diesel and Walker return to form in these characters and give us what we all know and love them for. Diesel proves once more that he can intimidate with only a glance and also the fact that he never sweats, ever! Walker still retains his boyish charms and continues to be endearing when he tries to act all tough on screen against Diesel. Yet, while Diesel wins the machismo battle, Walker always looks more comfortable on screen with the ladies, as he proves once more with his re-ignited love affair with Toretto’s sister, Mia, played once again by Jordana Brewster. Brewster still shows her skill in being able to make a believable on-screen connection with people who aren’t all that talented in the lighter arena of human emotions. As for Rodriguez, she is one of the original four and used heavily in the marketing of the film, but she is in only a few short minutes of the movie and really boils down to a plot device.
Recommendation: If you liked the first film in the series, you should have no problem enjoying this one. It still has holes and many parts of it could have made more sense with some basic story adjustments, but in terms of this series it is just under the original. Plus, you might as well keep track of what happens so you can be all set for the next chapter, which Paul Walker just signed on to. Faster and Furiouser!
Tags: car racing, editorial, fast and furious, fiction, jordana brewster, justin lin, keanu reeves, michelle rodriguez, movies, opinion, patrick swayze, paul walker, point break, review, screenwriting, street racing, sung kang, vin diesel
DandyID
Facebook
Twitter