Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) is an undercover cop on the trail of a group of street racers-turned-truck hijackers.
O'Connor's investigation has led him to a team of racers led by the brooding, mysterious Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel)...
My local theatre chain is playing the entire Fast saga, leading up to the release of F9. I’ve only seen a couple entries and since I’m always looking for easy long-ish projects, this sounded fun.
That being said, I was not the biggest fan of the original movie. I caught it on video after it came out and I remember reading a book halfway through. While I love car chases, I am not a car guy so a lot of subculture stuff went over my head.
Watching it on the big screen, The Fast and the Furious was better and worse than I remembered - leaning toward the former.
Director Rob Cohen is now more infamous for what he did offscreen but I have never been a fan of his work. Movies like xXx and Stealth suffer from bland scripts but are made worse by poor composition and confusing editing.
Perhaps because of my expectations, The Fast and The Furious is better composed and scripted than those movies. The filmmaking suffers from too much CGI and some bizarre post-production gimmicks which date the movie, but it is more coherent than these later projects.
Plot-wise, it helps that the plot is a straight rip of Point Break. I find it pretty bland (I am not a fan of Point Break), but the broad-strokes of the story and character beats work.
All that being said, the movie was an enjoyable watch.
The movie is clearly coming out of the zeitgeist of the late 90s - the soundtrack is full of my metal and rappers of the time (Ja Rule has a small role and provides the end credits song)
What i found interesting we’re picking out the elements that the franchise would expand upon. Watching F&F1 through that frame, you can see eye thing that the franchise will turn into, but a lot of it is through a funhouse mirror.
Dom feels like a fleshed-out human being with flaws. It’s not original in any way, but Diesel is playing the pathos for the hilt.
What I was amazed by was how earnest the movie was - there are no jokes in the movie, not even earnest in-universe one-liners. You realise how important humour has become in the Fast and Furious franchise, because here the lack of wit adds to the lack of originality to the story.
That earnestness did work for some elements: I have never found Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster the most magnetic of actors, but they have good chemistry together, and I enjoyed their slow burn romance.
I really liked Brewster’s performance - she feels like a mature adult and adds a little electricity to what could have been the cliche ‘girlfriend’ role.
Watching Michelle Rodriguez in this, I realised this was the first thing I had seen her in - she does not get much to do but she is such a striking presence I am surprised she did not get a xXx of her own
The other surprise for me was Rick Yune - I remembered him being in the movie but I did not remember him being so charismatic. This guy deserved to become a movie star - he is very good as the misdirect villain but he adds a swagger and menace that makes him a good foil for Dom. I was surprised that they never brought him back.
Fast and Furious is famous for its diversity but I was shocked by the portrayals of the Asian racers - they portrayed as pure villains and not even that formidable. There is even a moment where one henchman is picked up by a cop in slow motion like a child and thrown to the ground.
Asian women are not even granted dialogue - they are ornaments to be ogled. Ogling sexy women is part of the franchise, but there is at least a sense of self-awareness to the later movies. This just feels leery.
It feels out of step with where the franchise would go, but in a good way - this is one area where the series has evolved.
The action is okay - Cohen does notshoot in as many wide angles as he should, and he over-cuts sequences so that geography is really hard to follow. That being said, I could follow it better than xXx.
There we’re also more car stunts than I remembered, although the effect was undermined by gimmicky virtual zooms and those cramped close-ups that Cohen favours.
The movie does become more engaging as it goes along and - on its favour - it fixes one issue I had with its chief inspiration: the third act does not feature the weird contrivance of Point Break’s’s final sky-diving set piece, which I have always found interminable.
Overall, I did not have any great revelations. On its own terms, The Fast and the Furious is too generic to really resonate. But as a launching pad for a multi-film saga? Well, I’ll leave those conclusions for a later review.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
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