Right OK here's another review coming at you's and this one is another American flick (there are quite alot on here!) and it is on The Fast and the Furious, the first film in the very successful franchise starring Vin Diesel and the now deceased Paul Walker. So let's get the car revved up, switch on the NOS and get going...!
So the story is set in Los Angeles and it begins with the main character, Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) who is an undercover cop who is trying infiltrate the local street race scene by working at an aftermarket parts shop and making connections in the process. This is in an effort to try and find a gang who are responsible for hi-jacking cargo from trucks. While Brian visits a tobacco shop he flirts with a girl, Mia (Jordana Brewster) who works there and is the sister of a locally famed street racer, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). When the rest of Dom's team arrive, one of them, the hotheaded Vince (Matt Schulze) picks a fight with Brian over Mia, which Dom breaks up and he tells Brian to get out of there and not to come back. Brian later however enters a street race with his car and he wagers pink slips for Dom's car, which Dom accepts. During the race, Brian gains an advantage as he uses nitrous oxide to boost his car's speed, but Dom also uses it and goes to beat Brian and win the race. Soon after the race the LAPD arrive which forces everyone to flee from the scene, as Dom takes off in his car, he parks it in a parking garage and leaves on foot, however he is nearly caught by the police, but Brian shows up just in time to rescue him in his car. Dom appreciates Brian's actions and begins to show him respect but he insists he still owes him his car for winning the race. However while they are driving they unwittingly enter the territory of Dom's main rival, Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) who follows them and forces them to pull over. After a brief exchange, Tran and his team leave Dom and Brian, but they soon return and blow up Brian's car, which forces Brian and Dom to walk back to Dom's.
On arriving at Dom's house, Dom invites Brian into his home, much to the chagrin of Vince, but this allows Brian to flirt a little more with Mia before she tells him he "definitely needs to take a shower!". The following day Brian brings a wrecked Toyota Supra to Dom's workshop where he offers his skills as a driver and mechanic. As Brian get's acquainted with Dom's crew, he becomes romantically involved with Mia, and we meet Dom's other team mates which include his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Leon (Johnny Strong) and Jesse (Chad Lindberg). Brian also thinks that Tran's team are the ones behind the hi-jacks of the trucks cargo and he puts it to his superior officer, Tanner (Ted Levine) as they raid Tran's home and hideout, but they find the parts that Tran has were legally bought. After this Tanner tells Brian that it has to be Dom that is behind it all, even though Brian is reluctant to see it as he has developed a bond with Dom as well as dating Mia. Brian then approaches Dom, frustrated at why he is keeping him in the dark about how he has acquired the auto parts and Dom invites Brian to a race event called Race Wars, and Dom says if he proves himself there then they will talk afterward. During the races however, Jesse races Tran for pink slips and he loses to Tran, and in a panic Jesse flees. Tran then confronts Dom demanding that he go and fetch his car and he accuses him of narcing him to the police, which angers Dom, who beats Tran in a rage before he is pulled off by his team. After this we find out that Dom and his team are the ones that are behind the truck hijackings and they decide to go on one more hijack to absolve Jesse's debt to Tran. As Brian nearby sees Mia argue with Dom, he soon confronts Mia after Dom leaves with his team, and tells her he is a cop and that he needs her help to find Dom as the truckers will be more heavily guarded out on the roads. And from here the film reaches it dramatic climax as Brian and Mia head out to try and find Dom before he could face his fate on the roads from the truckers....
The Fast and the Furious to this day for me is still a very entertaining and at times thrilling experience and I still think its also the best in the series as the sequels that followed were a bit hit and miss but here the mix of action, drama and fun is just about right. The story of course it has to be said is a carbon copy of the action film, Point Break, in which the main character is an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates the surfing community to find the gang of surfers responsible for a series of bank robberies. And the only differences here being its racing gangs and its an LAPD officer who is undercover, and he also ends up unwittingly befriending the gang leader who is behind it all. But the street race scene does help give the film its own energy and pacing that pretty much equals Point Break's need for adrenaline, only here its a need for speed.
Performance wise things are mostly good here, starting with Paul Walker, who's performance is admittedly a bit wooden here as the undercover cop, Brian O'Conner, who befriends the street racing hero, Dominic Torretto and becomes involved with Dom's sister Mia. Walker nonetheless does provide the film with some good moments such as in his first scene where he tests out his car at full speed and it spins out of control, and he hits the steering wheel angrily yelling "Shit!!". Walker also has some good moments with Vin Diesel such as in the scene where Brian turns up at the street race with his car and he says he will race Dom for slips and he says "If I lose, the winner takes my car clean and clear. If I win, I take the cash and I take the respect! To some people that's more important". And after Brian loses the race to Dom he smiles and says "Dude, I almost had you!" and Dom mocks him "Had me?? You never had me. You never even had your car!". And during the race wars scene, Walker has some good moments that include when he sees Jesse is about to race Tran with his dad's car, as Jesse says "Don't worry when I win me and my dad can roll together when he get's out of prison" and Brian says "And they'll throw him right back in prison after he kills you!". And later in the same sequence, Walker has a good moment with Jordana Brewster where he admits to her that he is an undercover cop and he tells her "Right now this isn't about you and me, and if you don't want anything to happen to Dom, to Letty, to Leon, to Vince, you need to tell me where they are right now! Maybe they might make through the night, but those truckers aren't layin down anymore!". After having appeared in five out of the six films in the series, Paul Walker unfortunately died last year in a tragic car accident in Los Angeles.
Which brings me onto Vin Diesel who does great in his role as Dominic Toretto, the charismatic street racer, who is at times not all that he seems to be. Diesel has various highlights in the film such as in his first scene where Brian get's involved in a fist fight with Vince outside his store. And in the scene Mia yells at Dom to get out there and stop the fight and he says to her "What did you put in that sandwich??" as he refers to a tuna sandwich Mia made up for Brian. And as Brian stops the fight he holds back Vince and says to him "Relax! Don't push it! You embarrass me!" and takes a look at Brian's fake ID and he says "Brian Earl Spilner, that sounds like a serial killer name! Don't come round here again!". Diesel also has his fair share of good lines in the film as well, such as in the scene where he mocks Brian after Brian says he "almost had him" and Dom says "You almost had me??? You never had me, you never had your own car! Granny shiftin not double clutchin like you should. Ask any racer, any real racer. It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning!". Also another good line is when he invites Brian back to his home, which when they arrive, Dom's team mate, Vince objects to and asks why he brought "the buster" back and Dom yells back "Because the buster kept me out of handcuffs! He didn't just run back to the fort, the buster brought ME back!". And later when Johnny Tran confronts Dom over Jesse fleeing in the car race Jesse just lost to Tran, as Tran accuses him off narc'ing him out, which leads Dom into decking Tran and yelling "I never narc'd on nobody! I never narc'd on NOBODY!!". But one of Diesel's best moments in the film comes in a quieter moment of reflection when Dom shows Brian his father's car, and he remembers how his father, who was a great street racer, was killed in a car race and also the regret he felt about beating one of the fellow racers involved in the race with a wrench sometime later out of rage. And after he turns to Brian and says "I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters, not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I'm free."
As for the other performances, Jordana Brewster is really good as Dom's sister, Mia, who becomes involved with Brian. Jordana has some good scenes as well, and her first scene in the film introduces her sassy character very well where Brian arrives at the tobacco store where she works and he asks how the tuna is. And Mia replies "Everyday for the last three weeks, you've been coming in here asking how the tuna is. Now it was crappy yesterday, it was crappy the day before, and guess what? It hasn't changed.". Jordana also has a funny yet cruel moment in the film where Mia flirts with Brian and Vince enters the room, drunk, he tries to make popcorn and he insults Brian, and Mia asks Vince what was the name of a Cuban restaurant they once went to, and Vince smiles and says "Cha cha cha" and Mia turns to Brian and says "Well you can take me there". Michelle Rodriguez is also good as Dom's girlfriend Letty, who is pretty fiesty and not to be messed with and at one point during Dom's house party he sees a group of girls talking to Dom and she says to them "I smell... skanks! Why don't you girls pack it up before I leave tread marks on your face!".
In the supporting cast, Ted Levine is excellent in his role as Sergeant Tanner, Brian's supervisor in the undercover operation and his scenes with Walker work really well in the film and offer a nice change in the dynamic of the story. Levine has some good moments in the film such as where he tries to convince Brian that Dom may be responsible for the hijacks but Brian thinks Dom is too controlled for that, and Tanner then shows him some photos of a man Dom brutally assaulted with a wrench and he says "Oh yeah, Toretto's a real model of self control". Rick Yune is also good in his role as Dom's arch rival, Johnny Tran, and he has some good moments such in the scene where he viciously questions a man named Ted for the whereabouts of his car's engines and he starts to pump oil all over the man's face and afterward he says to Ted "kiss my shoes" and he kicks him. And later he has a good scene where he confronts Dom about the SWAT raid on his house, and he says "TORETTO! SWAT came into my house and disrespected my whole family because someone narc'd me out! And you know what?! It was you!!". And lastly Chad Lindberg is also good in his role as Dom's team mate, Jesse, who is a real car geek, who has great automotive knowledge but also suffers from ADD and he later makes the mistake of racing Tran for pink slips. Lindberg's best moment comes in the film when Jesse says grace before Dom and his team eat their meal and he says "Spirit. Thank you for providing us with direct-port nitrous, uh injection, four-core intercoolers, and ball-bearing turbos, and um... titanium valve springs. Thank you!".
Getting onto the guy who sits in the chair and shouts action, Rob Cohen does a fine job with directing the film as he keeps the pacing of the film nice and tight throughout and he stages the car racing scenes really well. Cohen also makes a nice use of a visual effect that shows the difference between daytime and night time as during the film in certain points we see the skyline change from day to night for specific scenes, such as when we cut from day time to the night of the first street race early on in the film. The film's music score is also worthy of note which was composed by BT (no not British Telecom!) an American composer who provides a cool, atmospheric soundtrack for the film which is both electronic and at times orchestral. BT also uses tracks from different artists such as rock and metal arists such as Limp Bizkit, Hoobastank and Dope, which while not all of them are great they are used pretty well in the film.
Sooooooo getting onto that part of the review where I look at the film's niggles and annoyances, does TFATF have any at all???? Well sort of. It has to be said the film at times is a bit cheesy and it has one or two cringing moments such as the scene where Dom and Letty are getting it on in Dom's garage, and he buries his head in her chest! (Gawd!). And there is also the scene near the end where Dom and Brian race one another, and Dom get's into his dad's car and as he drives off and after he helps deal with Tran and his right hand man, Lance, the two of them get ready to go at the traffic lights, and when they turn green, Dom revs the car as the front of it rises up as he speeds off! Its just a moment where you want to bury your head in the sofa (of if you could bury it in Michelle's chest that would be better!). It also has to be said that the film's plot is hardly original as it is as I mentioned a carbon copy of Point Break's plot right down to the very end (well just about as its not quite the same). And I also felt that the hijacking sequences are far less interesting than the rest of the action in the film and that it actually has less of an impact on the story than Point Break's bank robbery plotline did. Although one way in which the film does score over Point Break is the identity of the hijackers isn't really established until later on, as Dom's team don't use their voices, but in Point Break we know Patrick Swayze is behind it right from the get go.
Sooooo despite that, The Fast and the Furious is still a very enjoyable action film and for me its still the best out of the five sequels that followed, all of which but the second film (which was directed by John Singleton) were directed by Justin Lin. And as a quick run down of them I've not really watched Fast 2 Furious, but I've heard it wasn't that good. Tokyo Drift on the other hand is an improvement, although it doesn't feature any of the original cast in it. Fast and Furious, which is a follow up to the first film, in which Rodriguez's character Letty has been killed off, sees the old cast reunited, is a good follow up, where Brian finally catches up with Dom, who seeks revenge for the death of Letty and Brian also get's back together with Mia. Fast Five is not too bad overall and the plot mainly follows Dom assembling a team to pull off a 100 million dollar heist, and it also features Dwayne Johnson aka "The Rock" who puts in a pretty decent performance as well as an FBI agent in Dom's pursuit. And lastly Fast & Furious 6, which I've not seen either but has been reputed to have received some good reviews and also sees the return of Michelle Rodriguez in her role as Letty, so something must have happened there! So basically I should try and catch up and watch Fasts 2 and 6 (and the rest of 3 come to think of it as I only watched so much of it).
And soooooo after that exhaustive review I think shall leave yee there for now.
Until the next one, bye for now.
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