The Fast and The Furious Trilogy

The Fast and The Furious (June 5/01)

One pretty much gets what one would expect out of The Fast and The Furious - lots of car chases, lots of rap music and lots of explosions - but it's all basically eye (and ear) candy. Paul Walker stars as an undercover FBI agent sent to infiltrate the world of illegal street racing. Vin Diesel is the leader of one such gang, who is quickly revealed to possess a heart of gold. Walker has to find out who's behind a series of highway robberies before the FBI moves in and arrests everyone. And every now and then, there's a race. The Fast and The Furious is not completely without interest. The racing scenes - as sparse as they are - are quite exciting (if hindered by the awful rap music that's usually blaring in the background) and Diesel is as good as ever. While he doesn't get a single scene that allows him to be as cool as he was in Boiler Room (remember that part where he convinced someone to buy phony shares? That scene alone is better than anything in The Fast and The Furious) and he never gets to be the complete badass he was in Pitch Black, but he's still incredibly charismatic. Paul Walker is Paul Walker; if you saw him in The Skulls, you know what to expect (but then again, Keanu Reeves emerged from Point Break a bonafide action hero, so you never know). The acting's all fine, but that's not really what's wrong with The Fast and The Furious. About 20 minutes into the movie, there's a very exciting and andreline-rushing race (with one serious flaw: The people standing at the starting line all wind up standing at the finishing line, too! Now, these cars are going close to 200 MPH, so how all these people actually manage to beat the racers to the end has got to be some sort of metaphysical miracle) but after that, it's mostly exposition. And exposition in a movie like this is a definite no-no. Some, is okay (like in Speed, when they'd occasionally cut to Jeff Daniels working on the case at the police station), but this much is just distracting. Let's put it this way: If you've seen the trailer, you've seen bits and pieces of all of the races. Director Rob Cohen does a decent job of putting together some halfway exciting car chases, though one can't help but lament his decision to edit such sequences as though he were Antoine Fuqua on crack. And double jeers to the obnoxious soundtrack, which features everything from Ja Rule (who's actually pretty good in his small role) to Limp Bizkit. The Fast and The Furious is ultimately entertaining enough to warrant a mild recommendation, particularly among viewers with a fetish for these kind of things (ie if you liked Driven, you'll surely enjoy this).

Though sporadically elevated by John Singleton's stylish directorial choices, 2 Fast 2 Furious ultimately doesn't fare as well as its mediocre predecessor - with the surprisingly tedious car chases certainly playing a key role in the film's undeniable failure. The storyline - which follows Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner as he and an old buddy (Tyrese Gibson's Roman Pearce) attempt to infiltrate the crew of a notorious drug dealer (Cole Hauser's Carter Verone) - has been peppered with a number of broadly-conceived action set pieces, but there's simply nothing holding such moments together. That Walker and Gibson are trapped within the confines of flat, entirely uninteresting characters only exacerbates such problems, as it becomes increasingly difficult to muster any interest in their ongoing exploits. Hauser's gleefully sinister turn as the central villain is the one bright spot in an otherwise forgettable effort, with the sequence in which he tortures a hapless minion with a bucket and a rat undoubtedly the highlight of the film.