Fast & Furious
Guess who’s back? Vin Diesel’s back. And Paul Walker. And everyone from the first film. And the director from the last film.
I guess this is the point where they started to realise they could build a whole franchise out of this shit. It seems to have happened by accident, no matter what they did the films just kept making loads of money. So in this one the penny finally dropped, and someone out there realised that they could develop the relationships between the cool guys instead of droning on about gear shifts and NOS.
They’ve also made the decision to make this one a prequel to Tokyo Drift1, which in this case doesn’t add much to the story apart from some confusion (the title is also a mad choice given the title of the first film but that’s what cool guy movies did back then).
It all seems to be so that they can bring back the Han character from the Tokyo film, which is a nice idea but he barely features before saying “oh I’m gonna go to Tokyo” and buggering off. This is either a bizarre move or an indication of a bigger plan for the next films, in which case this one does serve a sort of pivotal role in the series.
But as a standalone thing, it’s not bringing much to the table. There’s cars and girls and the homoerotic undertones we’ve all come to know and love. They do finally start to tweak the undercover cop formula - this time Paul and Vin team up to find out who murdered Vin’s girlfriend (it’s more convoluted than that but who cares).
Also Paul Walker, and I refuse to call him by his awful character name Brian (another sign they didn’t think this would go past one movie), does seem to have found some acting chops. He’s a proper FBI agent at this point and for a few scenes there, looks the part. Until he starts eBay shopping for fast cars because of course he’s found himself another undercover street racing based mission to take care of.
I’m wondering at this point how much Vin Diesel is writing these. Twice in this film he smashes a car window with his elbow, one time when he could have just unlocked it. He also gets shot in the back but barely stumbles and seems to sort of shrug it off. You really start to get the sense of an ego creeping in here, which is of course always ridiculous to watch.
Again the action is in pretty safe hands with Justin Lin. It’s still that kind of 2000s shaky cam aesthetic but he’s got an eye for conveying a sense of danger that the first two films lacked. The opening scenes in particular were quite effective.
Anyway we’re not even past half way yet but we’ve pressed the NOS button and we’re gonna blast through these.