As the credits rolled at the end of The Fast & The Furious back in 2001, I immediately began to brainstorm. The storytelling/Hollywood system kicked in inside of me and I thought “How would I continue the adventures of these characters? Where would I take them next?”
Unfortunately Hollywood decided to mess with the formula and do their own thing for the next two installments of the franchise and took it far & away from the character driven first one. Yup, I said “character driven”. Compared to the others, the first one did a good job of displaying the camaraderie built around friends who would come together with one thing in mind: birthing a fast car. Oh yeah, and robbing trucks full of DVD players, almost forgot about that.
Sure, it wasn’t going to be Band Of Brothers type unity & honor but at least the hint of humanity displayed among the group added a human element to the otherwise pedestrian storyline. It was a hint of reality wrapped in a blanket of dumb fun, as my friends & I were involved with the underground scene here in Fresno for a minute (a story for another blog entry, perhaps), hence my affinity towards the subject matter & the source of many gas faces when I tell people I’m a fan of the film franchise. I guess constantly searching for a hit like the first one but never achieving it. But now comes this newest entry to the franchise. So were director Justin Lin & the cast from the first one able to recreate that magic in this entry into the series?
Not really. I was waiting for the moment where these two films would come crashing together in a glorious fireworks display but it never seemed to achieve it’s full potential, siphoned possibly by the need to add the flashiness from the other 2 sequels, something that the original was able to balance, to a certain extent, with the rest of the film. We know not to expect to much from the actors, right? I mean, Vin Diesel does play a good ass kicker when the movie becomes a revenge film, I’ll give him that. But no one else really does a damn thing to stand out.
So that aside, we’ll move on the bread & butter: the action. Director Justin Lin really doesn’t come through on this end either. His cuts are a little two jarring and that Michael Bay-style of super quick cuts are tedious and do wonders to help reduce any sensation of speed & tension built up between shots. Also, this movie suffers from what I refer to as “Swordfish Syndrome”: An opening action sequence that out guns any of the others in the film, leaving you like I leave many of my lady friends: disappointed. And when this is the linchpin to your franchise, it’s kinda hard to recover from that action deficiency.
The cars were nice (I was especially happy to see Subaru representing in the film), the girls were pretty, the sound was phenomenal and yeah…..that was pretty much it. Is it a bad film? Well, yes. But we all knew that going in, right? If you expected anymore than mindless fun then you are going to be disappointed but if you’re a fan of seeing cars crash and shit blow up, you’ll find some enjoyment in the film from this aspect.
Sure, I won’t lie: I wanted this to be a a better movie and had hopes that Lin would be able to elevate to the level he did with his previous film Better Luck Tomorrow. Or at the very least give me some amazing car chase sequences that would give Ronin & Bullitt a run for their money because when it comes down to it, let’s be honest: your not gonna win awards for anything else with this franchise. Alas, I ended up getting neither solid storytelling nor kick-ass action. So all I have left in the tank to run off we’re the further exploits of a group of friends that many years ago I connected with for a minute and now that I found out what happened, I really don’t care much about. Oh well. There’s always room for 5 Fast 5 Furious when this one makes bank at the box office, right?
So just to recap, here is the ranking of the films in the franchise:
- 1. The Fast & The Furious
- 2. Fast & Furious
- 3. Tokyo Drift
- 4. 2 Fast 2 Furious
3 Stars (out of 5)
Was there any nudity?
We discussed this at length via messenger, but you needa clarify “Action Movie Ratings” and “Dramatic Movie Ratings.” Because Let the Right One In receiving only a half star more than F&F is for shame, good sir. FOR SHAME!
Though I completely understand the “liking movies other people think are shitty syndrome.” We all have it, to some degree. Mission to Mars, right here. Sucker for space movies.