The Fast and the Furious

It’s hard to imagine that Fast and the Furious would be such a massive franchise just from watching its first film. Now up to ten in total (with an extra two still on the way), the original 2001 action flick about a cop going undercover into a street racing group in order to weed out who he suspects to be a mastermind behind truck heists, was not taken too seriously when it came out, even by those that enjoyed it. It had its fans, but considering the type of film it is and how it goes about presenting itself, it doesn’t scream ”multiple follow-ups”, and yet 22 years later, it transformed into a juggernaut of a franchise, and it has this film to thank for starting it all. LAPD officer Brian O’Conner (played by the late Paul Walker) is tasked by the FBI and the LAPD to go undercover to locate a heist crew who are responsible for stealing electronic goods through hijacking several delivery trucks with their modified vehicles. Brian starts his investigation by looking into Dominic Toretto (played by Vin Diesel), an infamous street racer and his crew. After developing a crush on Dom’s sister, Mia (played by Jordana Brewster) and earning Dom’s respect after saving him from the cops following a street race, Brian becomes a part of the crew and tries to find out whether or not Dom is the one responsible for these crimes. Having to contend with a rival racing gang led by Johnny Tran (played by Rick Yune), Brian finds himself in a dangerous situation that can only be resolved if he discovers the truth. But with his attachment to Mia now solidified and seeing how Dom isn’t as violent as he expected him to be, will he stick to the plan? The Fast and the Furious is a poorly aged and surprisingly dull film with only sheds of impressive car trickery keeping it together. Despite doing financially well and giving birth to a lot of careers, the poor critical consensus doesn’t lie and paints an interesting picture for how this franchise evolved and devolved as it continued.

The original idea for this film came about after director Rob Cohen, watched an actual illegal street race and also read a 1998 Vibe magazine article written by Ken Li called ‘’Racer X’’ about street racing in New York City. This already sets the film off as a project that has been birthed by curiosity into the world of street racing and whether or not that could be translated into a motion picture, and it’s totally possible as going into the inner workings of this unethical but thrill-inducing sport could provide some fascinating insight into the people who partake in it, how it actually works and why it’s an issue that should or shouldn’t be addressed (you don’t want to go too far into making it look cool to the point that younger audiences want to try it out, which this film undoubtedly did). The premise also has a decent concept behind it of a cop trying to infiltrate this criminal crew and gain their trust while also possibly falling in with them (although that gives off strong Point Break vibes), and this would lead to a decent story if the material was handled with any sense of conviction, which this film does not have. The movie is remarkably shallow as well as massively uninteresting, drifting through basic cliches, dumb characters, bland dialogue and featuring little action or conflict, only relying on a flashy, edgy presentation and an outdated tone and atmosphere to bring in a very specific demographic. The script by Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist (with David Ayer providing rewrites later in the production) doesn’t evolve the material past its base premise and leaves a lot of what could be interesting ideas and conflicts out to dry, either failing to resolve them in an engaging manner or just keeps them at a very cliched level. The film has a better pace and energy to it when the car action is involved and it does progressively get less boring as it continues, but it never raises above its material and just kind of stops at a weird junction. The climax does at least end on a fun note and offers some fun set pieces and enough of a wrap-up with the characters to make it feel like a complete story, but the engagement in the plot was so minimal that you can’t say that it really satisfied anything by stopping where it did.

The characters aren’t able to escape the poor scripting and directing and are plagued with being set within this very juvenile and immature environment which leaves them as both annoyingly boring, and just annoying in general. The tone of the story isn’t quite cartoonish enough to be enjoyably silly, but it also isn’t grounded and realistic enough to contain a level of grit and authenticity either, so the characters just feel like stock roles in a generic action game of the era, with the leads leaving little impression and the side characters barely feeling like characters at all. All the guys are just one-note stereotypes of either their ethnicity or social standing, and the women aren’t even allowed that decency and are just resorted to being pin-up models for the guys to ogle at. Most of Dom’s crew are incredibly unlikeable and even a decently known action actress like Michelle Rodriguez gets very little to do and just sits in the background doing basic stuff from time to time (unless she’s forced to show off her body, in which case, a lot of attention is put on her). The leads are probably the closest to feeling like actual characters with anything to work with, but as previously stated, the poor writing and directing keep them from working within these roles and leave them feeling pretty flat. To this film’s credit, it did start off the careers of both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker (both would stay attached to this franchise as it kept growing) and while it can’t be seen too strongly here, it did make them more mainstream for the casual audience member. Vin Diesel has the right build and attitude for this kind of illusive muscle-man street racer with questionable morals and at times, he’s passable, but anytime he has to be serious or actually emote, it fails horribly and shows that he just isn’t an actor who can carry a movie that wants to have actual meat to its content. Paul Walker actually improves pretty decently as the film continues; going from quite poor at the beginning, to gradually progressing as the film continues and ending on a fairly decent note, so that is a nice growth to see play out. A genuine surprise is that he actually shares a decent romance with the character of Mia, as Walker and Brewster do have decent chemistry and even though the direction isn’t anything special, the scenes the two share together aren’t too bad (maybe helped out by the fact that Mia is allowed to be a person and not just a walking bikini magazine cover).

For a movie that promises some ‘Fast and Furious’ racing scenes, it surprisingly doesn’t offer a lot and what is shown isn’t that spectacular even for the time period. While the budget for the film wasn’t incredibly large, it’s a solid amount at $38 million so it isn’t an issue with financing, also backed by the fact that when some of the action is shown, it can be okay. The final act is where it really shows off with an action scene involving a confrontation with a truck that provides for a decently engaging set piece, and even the climax which involves dirt bikes and even playing a form of chicken with an ongoing train, it matches that needed element of driving thrills without cutting corners, which is weirdly what a majority of this film did. The earlier car races feature very little shots that display the driving from the outside perspective, which limits the coolness factor of watching them race, and even when they are shown off, its paired with awful camerawork and choppy editing so it’s hard to make any of it out. Considering the speeds that these cars would’ve been going at, it’s fair that they wouldn’t want to go overboard with some of the stunts if it meant getting people hurt (even most of the places they filmed in were kept very safe, secure and overlooked by professional, so that element is admired), but if the movie is promising some impressive street racing, it would be nice to get some of that for more than just the final act of the movie. This film also suffers from being incredibly dated, made even worse because it’s an early 2000s kind of dated, which means there’s a lot of ugly visual filters that makes every yellow, awful in-your-face fonts for the title and credits, mostly garbage music that drowns out some otherwise decent songs, and a tone that is far too childish for its own good.

The Fast and the Furious isn’t the best way to start off a franchise, and considering where it’s gone in recent times, you can feel where its drastically improved in several places. Those films may go overboard to the point of insanity by veering into unrealistic territories, but they at least go all the way with that silliness and constantly try to one-up themselves with their action set pieces which makes them stand out from other action films around them. In contrast, this movie is very by-the-numbers and doesn’t do much to stand out from other car-based flicks even for the time, with movies years prior doing this kind of story and tone much stronger, so it leaves this starting line feeling a little underwhelming. It has a decent third act, a promising idea, and Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster are a decent pairing, but the directing, writing, visuals, tone, and atmosphere aren’t very engaging and at worst, pretty annoying. As a start for this long-standing franchise, only go back to this one if you want to explore an era when they wanted to be more realistic, and by extension, boring.