Posted April 5th, 2009 by Jamie Lisk

• Wide Release
• Director: Justin Lin
• Written by: Gary Scott Thompson, Chris Morgan
• Running Time: 107 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: PG-13 - Parents Strongly Cautioned
• Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, John Ortiz, Laz Alonso, Jack Conley, Gal Gadot, Shea Whigham, Liza Lapira, Don Omar, Sung Kang, Mirtha Michelle, Greg Cipes, Tego Calderon, Ron Yuan, Alejandro Patino, Joe Hursley, Cesar Garcia, Brandon T. Jackson, Mousa Kraish, Neil Brown Jr., Wilmer Calderon, Joseph Julian Soria, Robert Miano, Don Tai, Luis Moncada, Kofi Natei, Greg Collins, McCaleb Burnett, Monique Curnen, Roger Fan, Jimmy Lin, Brendan Wayne, Lou Reyes, Breon Ansley, Assaf Cohen, Loren Lazerine, Lou Beatty Jr., Julian Starks, Christopher Gehrman, Marco Rodríguez, Naureen Zaim, Becky O'Donohue, Sharon Zeev, Alexandra Castro, Jaimie Sullivan, Leigh Folsom, Mycole Metcalf, Barnaby Barrilla, Hazel Calderon, Abraham Chaidez, Jason L. Davis, Meredith Giangrande, Guillermo Gomez, Chicago Jones, Jessica Martinez, Frank Miranda, Bruna Rubio, Sagine, Dennis Winters, Holly Weber

 

Before writing anything, I scanned some of the reviews and, yeah, I think I get it, film critics didn’t like “Fast & Furious”, not even a little bit. Thankfully the real movie goers out there, you know, the ones who actually work hard and pay to see movies, well, they could give a shit what the critics had to say. Here I am, two days after “Fast & Furious” opened and the film is on course to make 72 million ‘holy fuck!’ dollars, despite the flurry of negative reviews. I guess once again the overall worth of film critics is placed into proper perspective. Folks don’t much give a shit what they think and they will go see what excites them, especially when the economy is running on empty and they’re in desperate need for some escapist nitro-fuelled fun. The “Paul Blart” effect, as it were. See, that’s something lazy, overpaid critics will never understand, unless, that is, they become one of the working class, something made more and more frequent as newspapers bite the dust and people turn to the internet for information. I hate film critics and every time another one gets fired; their smug, pretentious opinions trailing them out the door, I’m in my glory. Fuck them!

 

 

Me, personally, “Fast & Furious” is exactly what I expected… and needed. Something to take me outta that slump I’ve been in the past month since they started announcing layoffs at the plant I work at. I needed, no, I craved, the rush of Vin’s car racing down a hill so steep I felt my stomach drop out; rip roaring explosions and characters we know already and, strange as this sounds, actually give a shit about. Yeah, that’s exactly the medicine I was looking to swallow, and Justin Lin and Vin Diesel and the rest of the folks behind the full throttle action film, delivered. This adrenaline thrill ride deserves every bit of that 72 million it’s making.

 

 

The film’s protagonists Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) are throwbacks to the old West good guys and bad guys. Brian seems to straddle the line between good and bad, forever placing friendship before duty, his judgement and tactics, at times, seems questionable, but not to the audience. His sheriff’s badge might be hanging crooked on his chest, but the forbidding look in his eyes tells you all you need to know. Dominic, on the other hand, has been hiding out in the Dominican Republic, racing, ripping off tankers and generally being on the run; he’s the proverbial outlaw with a conscience. O’Connor sees that goodness, as does the audience, and the tough guy veneer Dominic throws up is all part of the joy of tagging along with him. We know these guys and we like these guys, and, oh hell yeah, we sure want to be riding shotgun with them as they streak down a highway doing 120 mph. Even though five years has passed since “The Fast and The Furious”, neither has matured much and, honestly, do we really want them to? They are our modern day equivalent to Jesse James and Wyatt Earp; our outlaws and we, the real filmgoers, wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

"Fast & Furious” starts out superbly with what appears to be a direct homage to the grand daddy of car movies “Mad Max”, as Diesel, Letty and the rest of the crew (which includes Sung Kang reprising his Han Lue character from “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift") look to hijack a transport hauling a foursome of fuel tanks, the old fashioned way, with people jumping from car to tanker and back again, going 100 miles an hour on a treacherous mountain road. The film barely coasts five minutes and it’s already throwing more action at the audience than most dozen action films I’ve seen this year. An agonizingly taut succession of events where upon adrenaline junkie Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), Dominic’s perpetual soul mate, is flopped around like a rag doll on the back of a transport headed for obvious disaster, the subsequent crash/bang sequence will either leave you picking your jaw up off the floor, or, if you’re a film critic, rolling your eyes in pompous disregard. For me, this was action! I mean real, honest to fucking god A-C-T-I-O-N!

 

 

Following the murder of someone very close to Dominic, he quickly packs his bags and heads back to Los Angeles for the funeral. Upon arrival, he immediately and quietly reconnects with his sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), before asking her to take him out to the place where their friend died. The crash site is rife with clues, which begets Dominic’s journey to discover the identity of the killer. Running parallel, Brian, a newly reinstated suit and tie F.B.I. agent, has rough-housed his way into a name, which sends him veering in the same direction as his old friend. The separate investigations eventually culminate in the same apartment with Brian attempting to talk Dominic out of dropping a guy out of a window to his almost certain death. Similar to the plot of "2 Fast 2 Furious", Brian and Dominic eventually compete to be the driver for a Mexican drug kingpin, which itself sets up the mother of all drag racing action set pieces. Drivers gun it, pedal to the floor through busy downtown streets, each vying for a top runner spot. The CGI is kept to a minimum, resulting in some shockingly realistic smash mouth accidents occurring left and right, enough to remind you of those 70’s era “speedsploitation” flicks, when guys like H.B. Halicki and Jack Vacek were revving their engines for a camera. This is car porn folks, the way it should be done!

 

 

Careening into the last lap, there’s a whopper of a revelation, one that ultimately pits the two friends against one another, if only momentarily, in a knock down drag out scrap. Boys being boys, I guess. Tunnels separating Mexico and the United States prove the backdrop, as Lin looks to interject a crisis which has become a permanent fixture on the evening news, into the story line, namely the vicious cross border drug war. In a somewhat disappointing, although electrically charged, capper, Dominic and Brian decide to do some border hopping in an effort to bag the bad guy. It’s preposterous, I know, but so is the idea of Charlize Theron chasing Woody Allen, but that didn’t deter critics from praising that piece of crap.

 

 

Some have suggested that the characters don’t really undergo any kind of arc, however, I thought the final shot of the film, with Brian organizing a plan to break his friend out of jail, there seems to be a definite change underway. This Brian isn’t afraid to embrace his dark side, something that he, up to that point, only did in accordance with his job. This time, instead of just letting his friend get away, he's actually driving the getaway car. It seems as though Brian had strangely discovered that code he was whining about early on. Bros before hos... er... Friends come first! Yup, that's it.

 

 

Okay, on to the bad stuff, as if I wouldn't mention that. Some of the issues I had with the film was, well, the acting, for one. Walker, as usual, is stiff and uneven, and an early scene with Brewster in a coffee shop is laughable. Half the time, he looks steely-eyed but lost, something that worked for “Running Scared” but not this film. Vin Diesel, on the flipside, is his usual buffed, charming self. Well, charming in that bouncer in the strip bar kind of way. Watching him browbeat his way through every scene is, at times, tedious, but he is, like it or not, the glue which keeps this whole thing together, and keeps us watching. For whatever reason, we like him and we want to see him get his man. The expected macho male posturing that goes on between Diesel and every other male actor in the film is kept to a minimum. Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez are used sparingly, with the former disappearing for a huge chunk of the movie. She pops up occasionally as Lin attempts to revive a romantic subplot started way back in 2001 with the first film, but it’s pointless. Also, there’s this deal in the movie where characters, only the good guys mind you, are able to move in and out of places easy-breezy that are heavily fortified with crews of gun-toting guards. After awhile, it’s too much, but, alas, quibbling about that stuff when there’s all that awesome car-wrecking going on, is futile. Sort of like getting all hot and bothered over the "the" versus the "A" in the title. It's silly. I didn’t really care, and neither will anyone else, minus, say, some bitchy film critics.

All in all, a great cinematic thrill ride. Leave your brain, and your worries, at the door, and just sit back and enjoy the ride.