Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay When I initially decided to watch the (at the time) eight films in the Fast and Furious franchise, I was highly skeptical and unsure of whether or not I would enjoy any of them. I was never obsessed with racing culture, and thus did not think that I could get into these movies.
I am happy to say that I was sorely mistaken! For the most part, I have been totally suckered into this wacky cinematic universe, and am very excited to share my thoughts on these films. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED! [NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for “F9.” You have been warned.] The Fast and the Furious (2001) The first three films of the Fast and Furious franchise are such a mixed bag for me. None of them can be considered good movies, and thus can only be described as varying degrees of “bad.” So, what about the very first one: the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious? Well, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. But it ain’t all that good, either. The characterization is shallow at best, the world building is rudimentary, and the narrative structure pretty shaky and uninspired. But of course, the Fast and Furious franchise is not meant to be Oscar-worthy material. Is it fun, entertaining, and utterly insane? Not quite, the early films in the franchise are (shockingly) more grounded than some of the later entries. The signature Fast and Furious flare and pizazz has not yet been conceived of. Instead, The Fast and the Furious is an overall bland action movie from the turn of the century that only succeeds regarding the establishment of the core character relationships between its four main characters: the undercover cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), the heist crew leader Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Toretto’s girlfriend and crew member Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), and Toretto’s sister/Brian’s love interest Mia (Jordana Brewster). While this film is an interesting one to watch in light of where the series goes for these characters, it is interesting only for that reason. So I guess The Fast and the Furious gets credit for that? 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) By the time that 2 Fast 2 Furious was revving up (😊) into the third act, I was pretty sure that I was falling in love with this franchise. If the first movie is an incompetent attempt at being adequate, the second movie is a no-holds-barred, full-throttle (😊) cruise to sheer insanity….and I LOVED IT!! The fact that the franchise got this ridiculous this early was, in my humble opinion, promising. By taking the absurdity of the first movie and ratcheting it up ten times over, 2 Fast 2 Furious serves as a thoroughly entertaining “good-bad” movie. To be clear, this movie is NOT good by typical standards. It lacks a compelling narrative and great acting, and does nothing very original. But, on its own terms, it captures the spirit of what Fast and Furious would become over the next few years so well that I cannot help but admire its gall to just be nothing more than what it should be. On a more serious note, I genuinely appreciate the chemistry between Brian and newcomer Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) in this film. I found it to be more entertaining and more engaging than Brian’s dynamic with Dom Toretto in the first movie, and looking back on it I think it is a great example of the franchise building out its world of wacky characters for future installments. Overall, 2 Fast 2 Furious is a fun-filled, dumb-as-hell action movie that made me hyped for the rest of the series. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) I know some fans of this franchise really like and respect what Tokyo Drift did for its future. But I cannot take this movie seriously, let alone admire virtually anything about it. Whereas 2 Fast 2 Furious embraced the silliness to its benefit, the third film in the Fast and Furious franchise takes itself way too seriously to its detriment. To be clear, there are some good things about Tokyo Drift. First and foremost, I greatly admire the talent and craft that went into the practical driving throughout the movie (specifically the drifting). For as much as the plot and characterization in the film is awful, I can’t speak poorly towards the production design when it comes to the racing. Also, the best character of the film undeniably is Han (Sung Kang), an enigmatic Korean gangster/mentor to the film’s American protagonist Sean (Lucas Black). Akin to Steven Yeun’s portrayal of Glenn Rhee on AMC’s The Walking Dead, I love that Han is an example of an Asian character in mainstream American entertainment that counters the stereotypes of said demographic still too strongly associated with Asian characters (albeit with less characterization than Yeun’s loveable pizza delivery boy). Otherwise, I found very little from Tokyo Drift to be enjoyable. Lucas Black was an incredibly poor choice for the film’s protagonist, both in terms of his lack of acting skills and the character’s lack of engaging character arc. Without a doubt in my mind, Black lacks the screen presence of past main characters like Brian and Dom and even falls flat compared to Roman Pearce from 2 Fast 2 Furious and Han in this film. It seems that the creative team behind the story put all of their energy into trying to make a workable narrative structure without trying to seek out a capable enough actor to pull off what they attempted to write. Furthermore, aside from introducing Han and [SPOILERS] a very brief cameo from Vin Diesel at the very end, Tokyo Drift contributed virtually nothing to the overall franchise. Whereas the first film introduced us to Toretto’s inner circle and the second film fleshed out Brian’s character and his inner circle, the Tokyo racing underworld introduced in this movie has NEVER been substantially relevant in any future installment. Overall, Tokyo Drift is a waste of a spin-off for what should have been a tolerable third Fast and Furious film. If only I could erase it from my movie-watching memory… Fast & Furious (2009) While the first three films in the Fast and Furious franchise are some degree of bad, Justin Lin’s second directed film in the series is a solid improvement over its predecessor. Fast & Furious, the 2009 film in which the story refocuses on Brian, Dom, and Mia, felt like a breath of fresh air after watching Tokyo Drift. This film arguably does the best character work of any film in the franchise. Granted, most people do not watch these movies for their character development. However, Lin stunned me with how he revisits these protagonists during rather different times in their lives from when we last saw them. While Brian has been working for the FBI, Dom and Letty have evaded U.S. justice while doing jobs in Mexico. When Dom learns of Letty’s murder, he goes on a quest for vengeance that causes him to cross paths with Brian. Without a doubt, Brian and Dom struggling to make amends is some of the best characterization in the entire series. Seeing these two polar opposite personalities forced to work together to avenge Letty, all the while coming to admire and respect each other in the process, is just so fun. Additionally, I liked how Brian’s romance with Mia feels more genuine and realistic than in the first film. The trio made up of these three characters lays a solid foundation for the series’ primary thematic focus going forward: family. I also really like the addition of Gisele (Gal Gadot) as a compelling example of the femme fetale archetype who serves as more of an anti-hero in this film. By now, the Fast and Furious franchise has fleshed out its world with enough compelling characters spread across the various films (i.e. Roman Pearce, Han, Gisele) that an Avengers-style team-up movie just felt inevitable by the time this movie came to an end. Arguably, this film’s only significant weakness as a Fast and Furious movie is that it lacks the same kinetic action of its predecessors. Whereas The Fast and Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious offered up some enjoyable racing and action set pieces, and Tokyo Drift added a layer to the “car-fu” with drifting, Fast & Furious feels like an awkward evolution away from the 2000s without having fully formed an identity as a modern, well-shot and well-aced action flick. Still, this movie does enough with its character development and building up for future installments that I actually appreciated its more grounded demeanor as an overall step in the right direction for the Fast and Furious franchise. Fast Five (2011) Fast Five is arguably the best film in the Fast and Furious franchise and one of the best action movies of the last decade. It succeeds on so many levels, perhaps most notably it reinvigorated the franchise by carving out a place for the franchise in the heist genre that made these films palatable for far more moviegoers (including myself). This is evidenced by the fact that Fast Five raked in 626 million dollars, more than the box office gross of the first three Fast and Furious movies combined. I think my favorite thing about Fast Five is that it wholly delivers on the promise of Fast & Furious. Now four films deep, the world built (mostly) by Justin Lin is allowed to come together to make for one hell of a team-up action flick. With the need to organize a crew, Brian, Dom, and Mia bring together all the fun secondary characters from the franchise: Roman Pearce and Tej Parker (Ludacris) from 2 Fast 2 Furious, Han from Tokyo Drift, and Gisele from Fast & Furious. Whereas Fast & Furious fleshed out the relationships between Brian, Dom and Mia, this film gives these side characters some well-deserved attention. Roman’s comedic, love-hate rapport with Tej being established here offers some fun moments in the midst of the heist planning and execution, and the playful yet genuine sexual tension explored between Han and Gisele made me more invested in both of those characters than I was in either of their previous showings in the franchise. The brand new additions are great, too! Elsa Pataky as Elena, one of the only clean cops in Rio de Janeiro, has some great chemistry with Dom as they make for a far more convincing couple than Dom and Letty ever were, if you ask me. But, without a doubt, the best character in the Fast and Furious franchise is Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), a no-nonsense federal agent who has some of the best one-liners of the series. And while his role as the antagonist to Dom’s crew in Fast Five is good, he only gets better in future installments. The other best thing about this film is the utterly ridiculous action sequences. The methods by which Dom and friends go about heisting take what we saw in 2 Fast 2 Furious and turn the dial up one thousand times over. Undoubtedly, one of my favorite set pieces in the entire series is when they hook up a massive safe to two of their cars with a chain and drive it out of Rio. Does it make sense? Hell no! But is it full to watch! HELL YES!! All in all, Fast Five may remain unmatched as the peak of the series’ potential. Not because the future films fail to ratchet up the insanity (quite the opposite!), but because how satisfying the movie is as a well-earned reward after getting through the first four entries in the franchise is perhaps too much for any other of the Fast and Furious movies to beat. (I guess we’ll see with the predictably two-part, Infinity War/Endgame-style finale movies) Fast & Furious 6 (2013) After the absurdly fun experience of watching Fast Five, I was certain that nothing else from the franchise could live up to it. And after watching Fast & Furious 6, I decided that I was right. 😊 To be clear, the sixth film in the Fast and Furious franchise is not one of the worst by far. I just found it double-downing on the ridiculous, action-oriented identity that the series had embodied by this point to be a little bit much. And not necessarily in terms of quantity, but rather quality. A lot of my criticisms about the action in this film come from the third act and the at-this-point infamous “27,000-mile-long runway” scene. In spite of the over-the-top, insane antics of both past and future Fast and Furious movies, this scene just felt so devoid of justification. In other words, Justin Lin gave off the impression to me that he was simply trying to one-up himself versus telling story through an action scene that is compelling to watch. Honestly, I don’t have much more to say about Fast & Furious 6. The story and characters are equally shallow as in (most) previous films in the franchise. Ultimately, I think that this is one of the more overrated movies in the series. Still, it’s super fun to watch and overall deserving of the mantle that is Fast and Furious. Furious 7 (2015) I am almost certain that if I rewatched Furious 7 that I would not like it as much as Fast Five. However, after watching five films telling the story of Brian O’Conner and his burgeoning brotherly love with Dom Toretto, the send-off for both O’Conner and Paul Walker as an actor in the franchise hit me just enough. For making both Walker’s death and O’Conner’s exit from the franchise emotional in spite of this franchise’s plastic, shallow origins, I give this movie a lot of credit. Besides that, however, I found the action set pieces in this film to be far more entertaining than those in Fast & Furious 6. No longer are we chasing Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) through the streets of London, and we are now skydiving in parachute-equipped cars to chase an armored convoy while Shaw’s brother Deckard (Jason Statham) chase them through the forest. HOW CAN YOU GET ANY MORE INSANE?!? Something else I genuinely appreciated about Furious 7 was the characterization in the movie. First off, the death of Han (Kang) at the hands of Deckard Shaw is a great driving force for Dom, Brain, and the rest of the crew. Furthermore, Letty Ortiz (Rodriguez) feels like a character worth talking about finally. As opposed to her scant appearance in Fast & Furious and villainization in Fast & Furious 6, Letty’s rekindling her trust of and relationship with Dom in this movie as well as trying to regain her memories of her past gave the impression that she finally had something closely resembling a character arc. Arguably the best character moment in the film, however, is the payoff of Hobbs’s (Johnson) absence from most of the film by him singlehandedly gripping a Minigun to blow up an enemy helicopter. I mean…C’MON!! Yes, Furious 7 is by no means a perfect movie. But it’s one hell of an entry in the Fast and Furious franchise and (mostly) holds up in today’s hyper-action-oriented Hollywood scene. The Fate of the Furious (2017) For many fanatics of this series, The Fate of the Furious is the black sheep of the modern run of films. Whereas the previous three movies transformed the series into action heist movies, the eighth entry in the franchise can at times feel too crazy even for the franchise that it calls home. I certainly see that perspective, but at this point I could care less because…in this movie…Dom and the crew drive across a sheet of ice chasing a nuclear submarine. LIKE WHAT?!?! I know it’s cheesy, but this film’s use of Dom as a fake villain was more compelling for me than how he had been used in many prior entries in the Fast and Furious franchise. Similar to Letty getting actual, meaningful attention in this film’s predecessor, Dom’s hand being forced by the real villain Cipher (Charlize Theron) provides some great melodrama that made me more invested in his story than I had been since Fast & Furious. Speaking of Cipher, I just love how much Theron hams this role up while also keeping her genuinely terrifying and psychotic. There are also some super memorable scenes in this film when compared to the rest of the franchise. Perhaps the two most notable ones are Hobbs and Shaw breaking out of prison with plenty of absurdly satiating one-liners and badass hand-to-hand combat, as well as the Shaw brothers saving Dom’s infant son from Cipher while giving the baby headphones to block out all of their gunshots. Honestly, at this point in the franchise, all of these movies are practically the same in terms of quality. And as far as ridiculous, over-the-top blockbuster action flicks, The Fate of the Furious ain’t the worst one of the series nor is it the best. It’s there for me to enjoy without loving it, and I’m perfectly happy with that. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Show (2019) As the Fast and Furious franchise’s first spin-off film, I was cautiously optimistic for what Hobbs & Shaw would offer to the series. A two-hour film emanating the two eponymous characters’ prison break from the previous film? COUNT ME IN! And, for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. I found the chemistry between Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham to have been kept largely intact from The Fate of the Furious, despite some jokes not landing. But many of them did, and some of them landed incredibly well (i.e. the dual corridor/key card scene). I also appreciated the injection of Vanessa Kirby into the main cast to prevent the group of protagonists from becoming an overwhelming stew of testosterone. Additionally, Hobbs & Shaw mostly succeeded at upping the action insanity and intensity without taking me out of the movie like Fast & Furious 6 did. I particularly enjoyed the helicopter scene involving Hobbs swinging a helicopter with a tow cable. 😉 But, of course, this movie’s by no means perfect. More than anything, I think that the runtime hurts it more so than some of the other films in the franchise. Whereas Fast Five and Furious 7 do pretty well keeping the audience invested well into the third act, Hobbs & Shaw loses a bit of its sheen once the protagonists arrive at Hobbs’s home village in Samoa. While watching Hobbs’s extended family preparing for battle, I just feel that much of the momentum of the movie was sucked out of it at this point. Furthermore, I felt that Idris Elba struggled to embrace the silliness of the franchise and the zaniness of his villain character in the same way that Charlize Theron did in the prior movie which, at the end of the runtime, disappointed me a little. Overall, Hobbs & Shaw is still a super-fun watch and a worthy beginning to the Fast and Furious franchise telling side stories with beloved characters from the series. That being said, I’m excited to see the next spin-off film come and best this one in every way. F9 (2021) As I sat down to watch F9, I was curious if any film in the Fast and Furious franchise could go too far. And while I still really enjoyed some parts of this film, it certainly gets the closest to crossing that line for me. Ultimately, I did not hate watching this film. However, about an hour or so into it I started asking myself, “Why is any of this happening?” or “What’s the point of this scene?” After watching F9, I am convinced that the criticism of this franchise as being too concerned with over-the-top action without devoting enough craft to the characters is absurd. And I know this because (most of) the other films in the Fast and Furious franchise do a better job of establishing interesting character dynamics and entangling the characters into fun-as-hell action set pieces with stakes that make our investment in the characters worth it. I just felt none of that during F9. I found myself having no interest in the central emotional conflict between Dom and his estranged younger brother Jakob (John Cena) that director Justin Lin wanted the audience to care about. Due to Vin Diesel and John Cena’s scenes that are supposed to be the dramatic core of the film falling utterly flat, much of the heart that is found in some of the best entries in the franchise seems to have been sucked out of this one for the worse. Outside of the central characters, I was looking forward to seeing how Han (Sung Kang) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) were reintegrated into the crew. But, like (most of) the other character work in this movie, their usage in the plot and action scenes generally lacked creativity or inspiration. The explanation of how Han survived Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) attacking him in Fast & Furious 6 is another level of convoluted retconning in a screenplay, and the fact that Mia’s relationship with Jakob is never explored in any significant way is an extreme oversight on Justin Lin’s part. I know most people don’t go see the Fast and Furious films for the character dynamics, but I need a little more in over-the-top action flicks than just explosions and nonsensical physics. I need to care about the characters being put in those absurd situations, and I simply did not care about the fates of these characters for way too much of the runtime. Furthermore, I loved how previous entries kept one-upping each other with their action set pieces (a safe chained to two cars and used as a wrecking ball isn’t crazy enough, so let’s drop cars with parachutes from the sky and hack into every car in New York City to chase Dom and his crew). However, the central action sequences in F9 felt restrained in comparison to films like Fast Five and The Fate of the Furious (and not in a good way). Yes, it was over-the-top, but not always in a really fun way. At the end of the day, I enjoyed my experience watching F9 in the theater with friends enough and I’m still excited for future installments in the franchise. But, it unfortunately joins the likes of Tokyo Drift and a couple of the other entries as films that I have no interest in ever watching again. And I can’t lie; that’s a disappointment. So, what are my thoughts on the Fast and Furious franchise? These are a set of movies that do not deserve the level of success that they have achieved in the context of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking, and yet they kind of do. Ultimately, Fast and Furious is a franchise that seemingly has no limits for how wacky, insane, and ridiculous it can get; people just keep showing up for it. I guess I’m one of them, because I’m all in for what comes next! With all that being said, here is my ranking of the Fast and Furious franchise:
What are your thoughts on this insanely fun movie franchise? What is your favorite (or least favorite) Fast and Furious movie? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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