Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. While most of our weekly screenings aren’t really driven by any sort of guiding theme, one of my housemate’s larger meta-projects lately has been to test one of my other housemate’s variable tolerance for action movies. We’ve basically pinned down that an emphasis on practical stunts, focus on at least vaguely human characters, and minimum of grating machismo are generally the key factors allowing our action-averse companion to enjoy some apocalyptic mayhem. And this week in particular, we discovered a franchise that somehow nestles within the overlapping circles of all our interests: The Fast and The Furious. As such, today I bring to you the fruits of a week and a half of fast and furious features, as we raced from the original film all the way through F9: The Fast Saga. Plentiful spoilers ahead, but you really can’t describe this franchise without referencing the audacity of its twists and setpieces. Buckle your seatbelts, folks. It’s time to get furious.
The original 2001 film The Fast and The Furious bears only a passing resemblance to what the franchise eventually becomes. The film is lean, dusty, and character-driven, introducing us to cop-slash-street-racer Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and outlaw-slash-sage Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), as well as Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and fellow thief Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). O’Connor is sent undercover to investigate Dominic’s alleged highway robbery crew, and discovers a man with a clear moral code and a grateful love for his family, a man he comes to respect more than he respects himself.
It is Vin Diesel’s unexpectedly poignant performance that holds this first film together. His reflections on his father’s death and graceful shifts between sentimentality and cold fury give the film stakes and confidence, mitigating the script’s lack of focus. Additionally, at this point in the franchise, we’re still basically dealing with thieves in cars doing theoretically believable stunts – the film’s climax is centered on defeating “a guy in a semi with a shotgun,” and the film sells the tension of that misguided encounter with ease. By burnishing its races and stunts with genuine human drama, The Fast & The Furious constructs a set of character dynamics that will form the backbone of an empire.
2 Fast 2 Furious drops Toretto and his family entirely, sending O’Connor to Miami, where he meets up with his old friends Roman (Tyrese) and Tej (Ludacris). Without Dom in the mix, this sequel is a much lighter affair than its predecessor, particularly given the buddy cop rapport shared by O’Connor and Roman. Tyrese makes this film his own, lighting up the screen with his effective combination of bravado and idiocy, and carving a lasting spot as the franchise’s comic relief.
Aside from the introduction of Roman and Tej, this film is mostly just an inexpert riff on Miami Vice with a heaping helping of car talk, making it one of the franchise’s least essential entries. They’re clearly in standard sequel mode for this one – with Dom’s story “already told,” they attempt a replay of the first film’s crime drama with none of its character-driven heart, resulting in a perfectly watchable yet entirely forgettable experience. I will give it credit for raising the preposterous car stunt stakes: from the first film’s “guy with shotgun,” 2 Fast races onward to “an army of cop cars,” “ejector seats,” and “Dukes of Hazarding onto a boat.” This will be the first of many, many escalations.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is something of an odd duck in the Furious lineage, as the only film starring neither Paul Walker nor Vin Diesel. Instead, we focus on Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), a high schooler who’s shipped off to his father in Tokyo after one too many property-destroying street races. There, he discovers the meaning of life in the form of drifting, throwing out his rear and sliding up and down parking garages, through busy street traffic, and down a mountain in an intensely Initial D-reminiscent finale.
Rather than the prior combination of crime drama and street racing, Tokyo Drift is a traditional coming-of-age story, as Sean gains confidence in both his driving and personal life. He is guided through this process by his mentor Han (Sung Kang), an affable street racer with a whimsical smile and laid-back philosophy. With a more vulnerable protagonist and a more focused script, Tokyo Drift’s departure from the franchise staples pays off: the film is lean and effective, and Han is such a charming presence that future entries actually slot themselves before this adventure, in order to bring him back while still respecting his mid-film demise. As for the escalation of car nonsense, Tokyo Drift’s crowning piece of absurdity is a flawless drift through Shibuya Scramble Crossing, which is apparently just one of those things you have to look out for in Tokyo.
Having journeyed so far from its origins, the franchise’s fourth entry is a stripped down return to form, a fact clear even in its lean title: Fast & Furious. Toretto is back, and he’s pulling heists with Letty and Han! Well, at least he is for ten minutes, until he decides that This Life Is Behind Us for the first of half a dozen times, separating himself from the group to ensure their safety. Then Han goes to Tokyo (don’t worry, they’ll be hanging Tokyo over our heads for the next several films), Letty dies, and Dom has to Take Matters Into His Own Hands, bumping into O’Connor as his police investigations also lead him towards Letty’s killer.
It’s a little odd to think this is the entry that revitalized the franchise, as it’s actually a fairly slow, somber watch. The death of Rodriguez’ character hangs a sobering gloom over the proceedings, and Dom has great difficulty forgiving O’Connor for his lies in the first film, meaning we don’t even get much of their charming rapport. One of the key tricks of this franchise is that although it doesn’t star particularly great actors, the people it does star seem to genuinely like each other greatly, and their honest camaraderie is infectious. Without that, Fast & Furious lacks much of the warmth of previous entries, leaving its pleasures to be found on the track (new escalation: cars racing through disused mines in order to cross the Mexican border).
After the fourth entry recenters us on Toretto and his associates, Fast Five arrives as a celebration of the franchise, a clear shift into a new paradigm, and a general wonder of car-based action excess. These films aren’t crime dramas anymore – they’re heist movies, and heist movies demand Assembling The Crew. Relocated in Rio and hunted by the implacable DSS Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), the family devises a plan to steal the fortune of a local crime lord, calling in Roman, Tej, Han (back from Tokyo, still fine), and Gisele (Gal Gadot – she was in the fourth one too, and makes about as much of an impression as I’m describing here) to help them.
Fast Five is audacious, ludicrous, and glorious, expanding the franchise towards both heisting and general action while still offering some reliable car-based lunacy. Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs stands as the first in an escalating series of Large Men who must physically face off with Toretto, and he makes the most of his extensive screen time, offering his reliable mixture of imposing physicality and winning charm. What Fast Five discovers is that as long as you maintain the core focus on Dom’s family and its evolving dynamics, you can go full JoJo in terms of the conflicts they face and still retain a coherent emotional core. This film rides that realization into the sunset and back again, culminating in one of the greatest setpieces of the entire franchise: Dom swinging a massive vault behind his car like a flail, thereby inventing the sport of car jousting in order to defeat Rio’s entire police force.
With Fast Five having established the franchise’s modern structure, Fast & Furious 6 serves as a well-earned victory lap, exulting in the globe-hopping, car-flipping glory of this family operating at full power. Dwayne Johnson’s on our side now, of course, and he’s got a chilling revelation to share: Letty’s alive! Yep, Rodriguez apparently decided the franchise had legs after all (good call), and so she is called back from the grave, now serving a seriously bad dude owing to her bad case of amnesia. Thus Dom must Assemble The Crew once more, now aided by Hobbs and the collective force of the American military.
By this point, the overall team and their dynamics have been clearly established, the precedent of “cars can do basically anything” has been affirmed, and the whole operation just sings with confidence. Characters do what they seem born to do: Roman screaming bloody murder as he almost gets crushed by a tank, Letty beating the shit out of some actual professional fighter (Gina Carano, in this case), and the twin pillars of Dom and O’Connor surveying it all, confident in their reign over this pride of car-lions. It feels like it could go on forever, and it maybe could have, if things had worked out differently. Our key escalation here: using spears to harpoon not just other cars, but an entire cargo jet, resulting in a finale that’s essentially the car version of hunting a sperm whale.
Furious 7 is both one of the stronger entries in the franchise and one of the most poignant, owing largely to Paul Walker’s tragic death during the film’s production. With much of the last act still unfilmed at the time of his death, the film and script have to at times shoot around him, resulting in awkward sequences like a fight with Tony Jaa where his face is never in focus, as well as scenes where his face is digitally imposed on one of his brother’s bodies. And given his cruciality to not just the franchise, but also the personal lives of his fellow stars, the film ends up steering towards an honorable discharge, as his character is allowed to retire with a sobriety and finality unlike anything else in the series.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, as Furious 7 also serves as the full introduction of one of the franchise’s greatest characters and actors: Deckard Shaw, a former black ops agent played with panache by the ever-endearing Jason Statham. Shaw introduces himself through the franchise’s latest preposterous retcon (he was actually the one driving the car that killed Han! Oh yeah, we’ve also apparently caught up to Tokyo Drift at this point, sorry Han, you’re dead again), and proceeds to chase Dom and his team across the globe, serving as a sort of angel of death who’s always arriving to muck up their heists. Even Kurt Russel hops aboard at this point, acting as the face of America’s black ops, and handler for our improbable group of secret agents. Our newest escalation? Driving a supercar straight out of the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, crashing into another of the towers, being forced by failing brakes to again leap out of the tower, and finally landing in a third tower, all of this taking place roughly half a mile above the ground. O’Connor may claim that cars can’t fly, but Dom disagrees.
With one of the franchise’s two main characters now absent, The Fate of the Furious is clearly scrambling for direction, and does its best to elevate several second-string characters into co-leads. Fortunately, Roman, Hobbs, and Shaw all rise to the occasion, doing their best to dignify the inherently preposterous premise of “Dom turns against his family, and now the crew must face off with Evil Dom.” What would possibly make Dom turn against his family? Family, of course – which in this case means the birth of his son, who is captured by the nefarious super hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron).
From an initial assembly of rappers-turned-actors and beefcakes, the franchise has at this point furnished itself with an impressive array of supporting actors, with Jason Statham in particular nailing his every appearance. Statham is great as a villain, but even more appealing as a seemingly villainous softy – something he proves with gusto during this film’s baby rescue sequence, wherein he dismantles a plane’s worth of soldiers while ensuring Dom’s kid enjoys a peaceful flight and cheerful chipmunk music. And for our latest dash of escalation, try a faceoff between our team of heroes and a nuclear-equipped submarine, all taking place on a collapsing ice flow. I’m pretty sure this franchise was about street racing at some point, but we are far from Kansas by now.
With Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham now established Dom collaborators with a fierce rivalry of their own, the franchise next lets the family catch their breath for a moment, as these two lead the buddy action drama Hobbs & Shaw. You might not think the man who killed Han two movies ago would make for an endearing buddy cop lead, but if so, you seriously underestimate Jason Statham’s personal magnetism. The unlikely pair are joined by Shaw’s sister Lettie (Vanessa Kirby) in a mission to retrieve a supervirus and take down Idris Elba, who’s been cybernetically enhanced to the point where he can credibly beat the shit out of Johnson and Statham at the same time.
Hobbs & Shaw is a celebration of this franchise’s ability to make enduring favorites out of prior villains, gleefully reveling in Johnson and Statham’s personal chemistry. With Dom and our main family absent, the film is free to explore what makes both of its own leads’ families tick, resulting in plenty of endearing “aw, Mom, you’re embarrassing me” moments for Statham and a welcome exploration of Samoan culture for Johnson. We’re definitely reaching the point where the preeminence of CG is draining the impact of the action sequences, but Statham’s genuine martial arts chops and some inventive helicopter-harpooning shenanigans still keeps things entertaining on that front. I’m not sure how many movies I could watch Statham play Shaw in and be content, but I certainly haven’t reached my limit yet.
By the time we return for F9: The Fast Saga, it is clear that no ideas are too ridiculous to inject new blood into the franchise, resulting in two major retcons. First, as it turns out, Dominic Toretto actually had a brother named Jakob (John Cena), who apparently never came up during his dozens of reflections on family across the previous films. Also, people like Han and Han is cool, so he rises majestically from the flames of his Tokyo crash, thus being conjured back into life for the second time in the franchise. Anyway, it turns out Jakob is evil and he’s working with Cipher now, so the whole gang’s gotta suit up and do some insane car shit.
The franchise has clearly burned through its nitro at this point, resulting in a sense of “this again?” hanging over much of F9’s drama. With Walker, Johnson, and Statham all absent from this entry, the onus of tying down this entry’s personal drama falls entirely on Vin Diesel – but how can any man effectively emote his way through the fifth revision of his origin story, a revision that largely undercuts everything we knew about him? Vin does his best, and the stunts are appropriately absurd (albeit increasingly weightless due to CG implementation), but it’s clear at this point that the franchise needs a final destination more than it needs more improbable retroactive Torettos. At least the escalation is doing fine, with Roman and Tej holding down their end of the franchise via a brief trip into outer space, further affirming Roman’s realization that they are clearly either invincible or in a simulation.
Given this full education on the fables of the fast and the furious, I can at this point affirm the franchise is just generally good times, so long as you don’t sweat its many narrative loose ends and unserious macho man posturing. At its best, The Fast & The Furious is great in the way JoJo or Symphogear are great, and the clear chemistry of the main cast means it’s always got a certain base degree of charm. There are certainly bumps in the road (entries two, four, and nine are particularly weak), but the appeal of the overall package makes it easy to forgive a lousy ride or three. Consider me a Fast & Furious fan.