Fast and Furious Retrospective
This weekend the tenth movie in "The Fast and The Furious" franchise is released. I am an unabashed fan of the series. I get how completely ridiculous they have become, but I love them anyway. So let's look at this series and go over its evolution.
"The Fast and The Furious" 2001
Ahh, 2001 when things were simpler. This is where it all started. A cop, Brian (Paul Walker), infiltrates a street racing gang led by Dom (Vin Diesel) to stop their next heist. This was the introduction of the core members of the "family," Brain, Dom, Leddy (Michelle Rodriguez), and Mia (Jordana Brewster). It is a fun movie, and the final heist is pretty thrilling (they were stealing DVD players, so it's a bit dated at this point).
"2 Fast 2 Furious" 2003
The second film in the franchise focuses on Brian going undercover to take down a dangerous criminal. He gets his childhood friend Roman (Tyrese Gibson) to help him. While it did rob the audience of more of the Brain/Dom bromance, it did add a new member to the "Fast" family in Roman. Diesel was not in this movie because he thought a sequel would taint the original. This is still a lot of fun: Brian jumps a car onto a boat at one point. The strength of "2 Fast 2 Furious" is the relationship between Brian and Roman; Gibson and Walker have great chemistry and keep this movie from being one of the bad "Fast and Furious" movies.
"The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" 2006
Honestly, the only good thing about this is that it introduces fan-favorite Han (Sung Kang). It is also where the timeline of this series starts to get wonky. At the end of this movie, Han is killed in an apparent car crash (more later), but he is in the next three movies. So chronologically, this movie takes place after the sixth. And this is the least crazy thing this series has done.
"Fast & Furious" 2009
This is where all the characters introduced in the previous movies come together and form the makeup of the Fast Family. Brian and Dom find themselves going after the same criminal. They must put aside the feud from the first movie and work together to take down their shared enemy. I consider this the last normal movie in the franchise. There are some great action sequences, but everything is grounded in reality (or something close to it). We get to see the Fast family work together and form the fun dynamics that carry the movies through the absurdities of the later movies.
"Fast Five" 2011
This is widely considered the best movie in the franchise. The Fast Family is in Rio and plans to rob a Brazilian drug lord to buy their freedom (they are all criminals, after all). They are being pursued by Luke Hobbes (Dwayne Johnson), a government agent determined to bring them to justice. I am a sucker for a heist movie, and this is the best heist in the series; it ends with Dom and Brain dragging a colossal bank safe through the streets of Rio while being chased by law enforcement and men on the drug lord's payroll (some of whom are cops). The series never reaches this high again, but they amp up the action sequences to compensate.
"Fast & Furious 6" 2013
The Fast Family is back. This time they are tasked by Hobbes to take out Owen Shaw (Luke Evens) in exchange for their records being wiped clean. There are two incredible action sequences in this movie that mark where these became superhero movies. One, on a freeway where Letty is thrown from a car, Dom jumps out of his car to save her. He catches her, and they land on the hood of another car. In a regular movie, one of them would be dead, but this franchise doesn't follow the laws of nature or physics. Han leaves at the end of this movie and goes to Tokyo, where the third movie takes place. In a post-credit scene, we see that fatal car chase again, only this time, we see a man get out of the car that crashes into Han's. The man is Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). He calls Dom and sets up the next movie.
"Furious 7" 2015
This picks up with that phone call and a bomb going off at Dom's house. There is a lot to like about this movie, but I only need to talk about the loss of Paul Walker during filming. On November 30, 2013, Walker was killed in a car crash returning from a charity event. The filmmakers were forced to stop work on the film and rewrite it. Through body doubles, Walker's two brothers, and archive footage, they could complete the movie and give Brian the sendoff he deserved. At the end of the movie, Brain, now married to Mia, leaves the group to be a father to their kids. It ends with one final race between Dom and Brain. It ends with Dom driving straight and Brain taking an off-ramp. It is a beautiful moment that always makes me cry (even now as I am thinking and writing about it).
"The Fate of the Furious" 2017
A hacker named Cypher (Charlize Theron) blackmails Dom into betraying the Fast Family and working for her. The remaining members set out to stop her and bring Dom back. Clever naming aside, there is not much to like about this one.
"F9: The Fast Saga" 2021
This is the only one I do not like at all. It introduces Dom and Mia's brother Jacob (John Cena), and the stakes get way too high, and things are way too complicated. The only thing it has going for it is that Han returns (it's complicated).
I do love this franchise. I love that there is no rhyme or reason to the naming of each movie. I love that a film about street racers and DVD players has evolved into car-driving super spies. I love how seriously Vin Desal takes his role as Dom, even as the movies get crazier around him. I am very excited for "Fast X" to see how this series concludes.
