The Fast and the Furious
Even though this film came out in 2001, I watched it for the first time back in 2019. I got my dad the 8-movie collection of the franchise in 2018, either for his birthday or Christmas . He hadn’t actually seen any of the movies either, but he enjoys action movies. At that time, I started redeeming any digital codes for any movies we had at my parent’s house. With these codes, I was able to use the digital movie service Movies Anywhere. I got the app on my Roku stick and had access to all of these movies on my TV. One day, I decided I wanted to watch all of the movies in the Fast & Furious franchise. In a span of two weeks, I watched all eight movies from beginning to end. I was shocked I had been missing out on these movies for all of this time.
The Fast and the Furious is the first film in the now billion-dollar franchise. The plot revolves around Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) as an undercover cop. He is working alongside the FBI to determine who has been hijacking 18-wheelers that carry thousands of dollars worth of electronics. In order to figure this out, he gets involved with a crew of street racers led by Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel). He believes Dominic can help him uncover this mystery. However, as he gets more involved with Dominic’s crew, he starts to question where his loyalties align.
If you can believe it, the film that kicked off this massive franchise was inspired by little more than a magazine article. In May 1998, VIBE magazine published an article written by Ken Li called “Racer X”. The article focuses on a man named Rafael Estevez as he becomes a well-known figure in the illegal street racing scene of Manhattan. Through his story, the article gives a brief history of street racing from its beginnings in southern California. The writers of the film simply took the idea of illegal street racing as described in the article and developed a story. It’s not like the article had enough material to develop a 106 minute long movie. In any case, we have “Racer X” to thank for this piece of entertainment.
Even though illegal street racing was the inspiration for this movie, I would say that it’s more of a feature, rather than the main focus of the plot. There are only a few actual street races shown in the movie. The main focus of the story is on Brian and his involvement with Dominic and his crew. The street racing acts as a way to bring everything together. Putting all of that aside, it is a definite highlight of the film. The scenes are shot well, they put you in the driver seat, and, most importantly, they’re fast. The same can be said for any of the other scenes with fast cars and precise driving. Everything has a real sense of urgency and suspense. This can be seen especially with the big stunt towards the end which sees Brian jumping onto a moving semi-truck.
Everyone in the cast gives performances that suit their characters well, with particular praise going to Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. However, in all fairness, these roles aren’t exactly ones that require a great deal of nuance. Most of the characters are there as support and don’t require much effort. The only ones that evolve throughout the movie are Brian and Dom. Brian is this young and cocky police officer who wants to prove his worth, to his superiors and to Dom. On the other side, Dom is this tough and loyal leader who takes care of his family. Paul Walker and Vin Diesel carry the film with their performances. As the film goes on, you start to see Dom becoming a mentor to Brian. At the same time, even though he’s actively deceiving Dom’s crew, Brian really starts to care for these people. He sees how street racing is their way of life.
I think my favorite moment in the movie is when Dom finds out Brian is a cop. Towards the end of the movie, Brian is forced to call in a helicopter for a medical evacuation in front of Dom. As soon as Brian identifies himself to the operator, Dom immediately gets a look of hatred towards Brian. You can see all of the trust Dom had for Brian turn to pure rage. As Brian gives information to the operator, he has to keep his eyes on Dom. He can see how much Dom wants to bash in his head. This is a fantastic example of a scene that shows two stories happening at once.
On the technical side of things, this film manages to capture the intensity of fast cars without making you feel disoriented. Sure, there’s tons of gear shifting, fast edits, and quick movements. However, nothing feels disjointed. Unless you’re someone who gets dizzy from these kinds of things, you should be fine keeping up with what’s happening. It’s not like this movie is 106 minutes of fast cars. There are plenty of slower paced scenes, some that really showcase the L.A. landscape. Of course, it wouldn’t be L.A. if it didn’t feel super hot, right? Much of the cinematography uses tones of orange and yellow during the daytime shots to give a sense of heat. Honestly, I probably could’ve done without that, but it’s not a deal-breaker. You get used to it after a while. Nobody looks like they have jaundice.
Whether or not the filmmakers intended for this movie to be the first in a long series, the film certainly has some growing pains that come with the territory. They’re just getting started, so they don’t always know what they want to focus on with different plot points. A number of the characters make reference to this big street racing event known as Race Wars. It gets built up to be this big climactic finish, but you don’t see a whole lot of it. You get to see a couple races, but then the plot moves on towards the actual climactic finish. Also, as mentioned previously, most of the characters aren’t given much to do besides spit out a bunch of car and mechanic jargon. Aside from Brian and Dom, Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Dom’s sister, is the only side character with much to do. Of course, all of this is to be expected from the first outing in a long series. It’s not like every major franchise hits it out of the park on their first round. We can’t all be Iron Man.
If I ever want to watch a Fast & Furious movie without watching the entire series, I usually watch this one. It’s pretty simple and enjoyable to watch. Whenever you watch something multiple times, you start to notice certain things that clearly got missed by the editors. A lot of them in this movie are blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kinds of things. There’s a shot when everyone’s at the Toretto house after the opening race. Vince and Leon are confronting Dom about bringing Brian back to the house. It cuts to Leon who is clearly trying to say something, but all you hear is Letty telling Dom to come upstairs with her. It’s actually on screen for like three seconds, long enough to be noticeable by the editors. In another instance, Dom is shouting at Vince to grab his hand during the final heist. In one shot, Dom clearly says “Three!”, but the you hear him shout “Two!” There are other times when it sounds like Letty’s dialogue is dubbed over when you can see her talking. That may or may not be true, but the audio for a lot of her lines don’t sound like they’re part of the audio that’s on screen. They sound too clean.
However, my favorite instance of this comes from a conversation between Brian and Dom. This is a line flub that is pretty obvious. At the beginning of the third act, Brian and Dom are on a drive and get shrimp at a seafood shack. Brian is under pressure from his superiors, so he confronts Dom about how he’s able to make so much money to pay for all the work they did on his new car. As Brian confronts Dom, the entire shot has both of them in it. As Paul Walker delivers one of his lines, he stops, collects himself, then starts the entire line over again. Paul Walker seems to play it off like he got something in his throat, or he’s trying to keep it down because of all the people around, but it seems pretty obvious that he just messed up the line. Since the entire shot has both of them in frame, they would’ve had to redo the entire sequence in order to get the line right. I think Paul Walker just redid the line in the moment, and this was the best take they had for this shot. This feels like it would be more obvious to people on their first viewing, especially since I’ve pointed it out here. It doesn’t ruin anything for me about the movie, but I find it hard to believe this is the best take they had for this shot.
If you started looking for a movie that really screamed “I was made in the 2000’s!”, you’d have a hard time finding one better than The Fast and the Furious. From the music, outfits, slang, everything is straight out of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Having grown up in that time, I’m not complaining. I especially like the music they use. It’s a lot of hard rock reminiscent of the post grunge era. There’s also plenty of Ja Rule in the soundtrack in case you needed another reminder. Honestly though, all of these movies do really well to encapsulate the time period in which they were made. You could do a lot worse than all of these movies to get an idea of what was popular at the time. Although, now that I think about it, they really just use popular music to capture the time.
Overall, this is a really solid movie. With it being the first in the franchise, it doesn’t have to improve upon anything that came before it. It’s allowed to be a stand-alone film. This is part of the reason The Fast and the Furious is my second favorite film in the franchise. Sure, it has room for improvement, but that’s to be expected. Honestly, if you were to watch only one film in the series, I would pick this one. It has exciting action, likeable characters, and is a strong beginning to a very successful franchise. Not all franchises can say that about their first outing.
