The Fast and The Furious: The Complete Franchise Analyzed

When I saw the first Fast and the Furious flick, I can't say I was terribly impressed.  So I kinda skipped 2 Fast 2 Furious when it came out.  Then one night I was drunk and thought that the third one was such a blast that I went back and saw the second one.  My analysis of this film serial may be slightly distorted by the sequence in which I viewed these films, but I assure you of this: I was drunk when I saw each one of them.

A lot of my disappointment in the One Fast One Furious was due to not being smart/sober enough to realize it was a sci-fi film at first.

You know when they make a movie like The Fifth Element or Star Wars they do a bunch of wacky stuff right off the bat to let you know its not taking place in the same world in which you live.  Like having flying spaceships and lazerswords and people with wacky names like Blade J. Runner and T-1000 instead of Jim or Chuck or Sally.  And I don't know anybody's father who dresses like Darth Vader, not that his get-up isn't nifty.

You see, The Fast and the Furious: Part One is one of those other types of sci-fi films set only a couple months in the future.  The problem is that making movies takes up to a year so things that sounded really cutting edge in the screenplay end up just being a bunch trends and stuff that didn't actually happen by the time the film is released.  The characters all live in houses like the slums I grew up in, they all have normal names, but some things are just a bit off.

There are some key clues that this is a sci-fi movie, and frankly, I feel embarrassed that I didn't catch on the first time.  The obvious thing being rockets in cars.  The main "sport" featured in this film is racing forward in a straight line against some other guys and pressing a rocket button at the right time.  I tried to do a bit of investigation after seeing this film and none of the mechanics I called had catalogues they could send me about the various rockets I could have installed in my car.  So obviously, a prediction about the future that never came true. Sorta like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, we're now well past that date and aside from my nightmares about monoliths, none of that stuff happened, but he thought it would back in the 70s.  Fair game.  These movie guys aren't Nostradomus or Tupac or nothing.  They're just entertainers.

The other futuristic thing about this movie is the crime style.  This movie revolves around a group of cray-zee stunt drivers who rob trucks while in motion by zooming around the trucks on the freeway in their rocket cars and shooting a harpoon at the truck and bungeeing onto the hood and taking the wheel and driving away with the merchandise.  In our time, most burglars prefers stationary targets and would wait for the trucker to stop and get a burger and steel the truck while it was parked outside of the truckstop.  This movie assumes that legislation has been passed that carries a harsher penalty for robbing a stationary target.  Which must mean that in this future, marathons are just invitations for mass muggings, but this is never addressed in the films.  The first time I saw this film and didn't know it was sci-fi I just thought these criminals were idiots because their M.O. required such specific cars and driving stunt and ninja skills that it would lead the cops right to them.

You might argue that the silly "sport" of racing in straight lines is also part of the futuristic setting since in present day USA the most popular sport is NASCAR where cars just race around in circles.  You could argue that since people keep getting more stupid NASCAR love would eventually devolve into just wanting to see cars go in straight lines.  I would agree, except that the F&F sequels both add curves to the roads and require more handling and reflex ability out of their racers.  So my theory is this:  in the original cut of the first movie the sport was actually to knock back insane amounts of liquor and then try and drive in a straight line, only somebody got offended and so they had to cut all the footage of the racers downing shots off the hoods of their vehicles before the race.  It’s the only theory that makes sense.  I mean if these racers are all going through the catalogues of rockets to put on their cars they know if they bought the best rocket or not and whether the bloke they're challenging has better one.  So why wager all that money when technology decides the outcome of every race?  Becuz you can handle your liquor better, that's why!  I understand why they cut the boozin' element out these movies.  A bunch of dumb kids would try to imitate what they see on screen just like I did when I first saw Y Tu Mama Tambien (my former travel buddy won't even speak to me anymore).  I would write the studio asking for an Unrated Director's Cut DVD (or however they want to phrase it on the packaging) but I think adding that back into the first film would make it seem weird in relation to the other two sober installments in this glorious franchise.

Aside from all this other-worldly stuff with rocket cars and crazy stunts there’s some stuff that’s insanely realistic even for a non-action movie that would be set in our time. There’s a scene where they go to a house party and it’s in an actual sized rowhouse. Unlike in regular movies, there’s just a few people and they’re sitting around talking and playing video games. I’ve been to parties like this. Usually in movie house parties the living room is huge and packed with well dressed people jumping up and down hysterically, sometimes they even bust out lighting effects. Also, Vin Diesel’s relationship with his girlfriend, played by Michelle Rodriguez, is really normal. They’re neither insanely affectionate nor comically bickering, they kinda have little disagreements and work it out in a casual way and show affection through occasional light touches and smooches. The subtlety actually kinda freaked me out and I’m not going to spend any more time discussing it.

I haven't really talked about what actually happens in this film yet.  The basic story is that stunt truck robbers mentioned above are a menace to society.  So the cops decide to find out who's behind all these robberies by sending out an undercover cop to the local racing spots.  For some reason the undercover cop is played by Paul Walker, who seems too nice to be a regular Rodney King beating L.A. cop let alone blend in with badass career criminals. But as in most movies, Paul Walker's bland charm and refusal to wear shirts with logos or text on them helps him overcome his miscasting. He’s also almost too hunky to play a movie cop but I’ll let that slide. He’s got bulge, but he’s not a bulger.  I realize that this guy needs to eat and they don't make that many movies about sportswear male models, so he keeps taking these kinds of roles.  At least it's not Ethan Hawke or fuckin’ Marky Mark playing the cop again.

So, Walker quickly gets in with the gang that's robbing all the trucks, led by Vin Diesel, but since they don't say stuff like "I'll see ya later man, I gotta go harpoon onto a truck and steal everything inside, but after that, we'll grab a beer!" Walker doesn't think they're actually behind all the robbing.  He figures it's somebody else, but doesn't do much investigating as to who.  His superiors keep telling him that Vin Diesel is behind all this but he keeps standing up for Diesel.  A lot of this has to do with the fact that Walker has gotten involved (fucking) Diesel's sister, played by Jordana Brewster. Walker’s superiors question his judgment due to his closeness with the beautiful Jordana. In a surprise screenwriting slip one of the Walker’s superiors actually lets it slip that he wanks to surveillance photos of Brewster’s character. Whoops. Some people just don’t have a filter! Remind me to play poker against that guy. 

In a way, Paul Walker is blinded by the light of Jordana’s beauty.  On the DVD there are a bunch of deleted scenes expanding on Walker and Jordana’s romance, including several PG-13 sex scenes on the beach that seem more like they belong in an episode of The O.C.. The director, Rob Cohen, says that he knew he was going to cut those scenes even before he filmed them but decided to let the actors have the fun of snogging anyway. I think this Rob Cohen guy is the best employer in the world.

Ultimately Walker's superiors want to come in and arrest Diesel and since he and Walker have bonded so much (by letting his hot sister blow him and Vin telling a nostalgic story about his father) Walker just lets Diesel get away.

Man, did the undercover cop recruitment initiative fail with this guy!  I have to say, I find Jordana Brewster pretty darn dreamy and would probably let her get away with stealing some stuff (like Colin Farrell did in that awesome Miami Vice movie), but not her brother!  You gotta give your boss something to justify your salary!  You can't just expect danger pay for fucking Jordana Brewster.  I mean, her nice tan and perfectly white teeth and charming smile are dangerously sexy, but not in a way that it can be explained to the taxpayer as sustaining a legitimate risk in pursuit of justice. Besides, she wasn’t even in on the thieving.

Obviously before the police trained Walker they should have asked him if he would have trouble arresting somebody that he'd spent time with, whoever interviewed this guy must've had to answer for this.  You think when they're testing applicants for undercover work you'd give them a doggy to play with for an hour then ask them to hit the dog or something.  But it seems they just take any guy with a college diploma.

So Vin Diesel not only escapes the law but also the sequel: 2 Fast 2 Furious (that's actually what it was called, I'm not being funny).  This time it's set in Miami and according to Will Smith der ain't no city in dah world like dis, but if you axe hows he knows he gotz ta plead dah fifth (kinduva a cop-out if you ask me).  So Paul Walker has now proved that he was the worst undercover cop in California, but it seems the East coast is willing to give him a shot.  I guess they figure a great piece of ass like Jordana Brewster only comes along once in a guy's life and so maybe he'll have better judgement this time since the only woman around is Eva Mendes (who was also in Will Smith's music video "Miami"), and she only looks passably attractive from a couple of angles.

Walker has now become absorbed in the culture of car racing and become some sort of local idol in the racing scene which is no longer racing in straight lines, they now have all sorts of bends, curves and even a bridge drawing open to challenge the racers. Walker has also changed up his fashion a bit since the first flick. He now frequently wears a blue t-shirt, shorts, black shoes, and white socks. From a distance he looks like a handsome Beavis. He’s got some great new pals including rap star Ludacris and his girlfriend who sometimes kinda looks kinda sorta Asian and is named Suki and has anime character on her car’s computer deck, so I guess she’s supposed to be Asian, but like Vin Diesel in the first film, she adds a character who is in herself multicultural in the already multicultural car racing community. She also hollers sexual exclamations like “Smack dat ass!” whenever her car goes fast. This film also has some great movie Hispanics. The kind that only swear and say inconsequential things in Spanish, but deliver all important dialogue in English, even when they’re talking to themselves or other hispanics. I like movies that prove that everybody knows English and that you just have to pressure them and they’ll drop all this code chat. Paul Walker also occasionally bust out a few phrases in Spanish and looks really pleased with himself when he does. Walker also speaks Ebonics, frequently punctuating his sentences with ‘bro’ or the new and modified ‘breh’. So Paul Walker is multicultural in himself, kinda like a post-pubescent Justin Timberlake.

The Miami cops want Walker to infiltrate some car gangster's crew and take him down. The cop in this installment is played by the actor who was Richard Wright on Sex and the City, proving my theory that only once in an actor’s career do they get to play a character who is referred to as ‘dickalicious’ on screen.  The cops try to assign Walker a partner to keep him honest this time.  Only the partner they assign him knows nothing about cars.  Where do they keep getting these undercover cops?  Is there no training?  I know that in Miami Vice if Colin Farrell had done something done like ask "What's heroin?" that lispy guy would've blown Farrell’s head clean off and Jay-meeee Foxxxxx would've had to call in all his rapper friends to get him out of that room alive.  So Walker lobbies to for a new partner of his choosing, who turns out to be Tyrese, a criminal he grew up with in what is sure to be realized as a prequel film eventually.  Even though the cops wanted a partner there to keep Walker honest, a convict and a friend of his seems like the right balance of objectivity and honesty that the police seek.

If you thought Walker was too buddy-buddy with Vin Diesel in the first movie the relationship between these two guys is hella intense.  I don't normally see many action movies where the heroes spend so much time pouting, consoling each other, talking about learning to trust each other again, and feeling like they sometimes don't even know who the other one even is anymore.  They hug lots and put their arms around each other and offer each other a lot of moral support and encouragement whenever one of them feels insecure about a big car heist or something.  I really liked seeing this closeness.  2 Fast 2 Furious has lots of scenes that you would normally only expect in a movie like Good Will Hunting, but if that movie can have a fight scene and lotsa jail time then why not put the heart to heart stuff in this movie?  Since this film is set even further in the future than 1 Fast 1 Furious it makes sense that men would have evolved to become more expressive and lean on each other for emotional support.

The only other futuristic thing in this movie is that Paul Walker is now psychic.  He shows Eva Mendes early on in the film that he can drive without even looking at the road.  Then, even though he wasn't in the car, Tyrese knows that Walker pulled this trick to impress Eva because he must be psychic, too (not to mention kinda jealous).  Walker is obviously like those X-Men who are the first generation of this genetic evolution because Eva is clearly impressed by this ability, so it hasn't become commonplace yet.

The plot continues that Walker and Tyrese try the nice approach of just destroying the drug lord’s empire and sending him to jail, and when that doesn’t work they go to plan B: shoot him. They do some really original stuff with this plot. Tyrese makes an open pinch at the villian’s bum when he first meets him. Cheeky. 2 Fast 2 Furious also has the distinction of ending with Tyrese lifting up his shirt to show Paul Walker that he’s got a wad of cash stuck down his pants and the two chuckle heartily as we fade to black. I’ve never seen a buddy action movie end this way and I have to say I really admired it.

Then we get to the third instalment that started it all (or at least my interest in these movies).  This one is called The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.  That title required a lot more words than Snakes on a Plane to accomplish total self-description, but it was worth it.  This film starts off pushing the boundaries of the 30 year old teenager phenomenon, in which teenagers are usually played by youthful looking actors in their mid to late twenties.  But if Paul Walker can pass as a gangster then I guess I shouldn't be too judgemental. 

The chap they cast in the lead role looks almost too old to be starting a teaching career at high school let alone attending as a student.  Anyway, this 30 year old high school student is not only pulling a Rocky 6 and showing that 30 year olds can study alongside actors in their early to mid twenties but he's also a class warrior.  The opening scene is our hero getting into a dispute with the kid from Home Improvement about who's a badder (meaning: gooder) racer.  Zach from Home Improvement disses Our Hero's wheels and brags about the flash ride his "daddy" bought him.  We can assume that our Hero won his wheels through some kind of badassed competition and his Southern drawl shows that he's an underdog since everybody assumes people from that part of the world are stoo-pid.  So he's underestimated from day one. 

Rich boy's girlfriend offers herself as "the prize" to whoever can outrace the other.  She's not much of a looker, but these guys didn't really need that much encouragement to race. Besides, this franchise hasn’t seen a good looking woman since Jordana Brewster back in part one, so the ladies are judged on just-outta-jail standards.  So they have a race through a construction site and our Hero proves that his Southern roots give him the edge because he's got mad Dukes of Hazard driving abilities.  But the race gets reckless and everybody ends up in a one stop shop hospital/police station where you can get insult and injury in one go.  After being treated for his wounds the cops tell Our Hero that he should go that island where all the convicts are sent.  Our Hero obviously didn't get that the cop was talking about Australia, so he goes to Japan instead.

I sorta thought when the cop showed up they were going to force this guy to be Paul Walker's new partner, but they've totally abandoned Paul Walker's character in this one and started a new story.  The only link being the title characters, Fastness and Fury, which are more feelings than characters played by recognizable stars.

So our Hero shows up in Tokyo and meets his father, who lives in a little room in an alley.  I'm not sure if the same actor plays both Our Hero and then puts on a grey wig to play his own father because these guys looked a lot alike and were never in the same shot.  Anyway, the dad is some sort of army pilot or something so that automatically makes him a hardass by movie law.  So he puts his son in this strict local school.

Hero shows up the school dressed like Jet Li in Lethal Weapon 4, maybe because he thinks Jet Li is Japanese or maybe just because that's how he wants to dress now.  It's good to change up your style just like when Paul Walker started into that Beavis look.  Things get pretty wacky here at the school, again due to it being sci-fi set in the near future.  We're never really sure what language anybody is speaking.  I couldn't figure out whether Hero learned Japanese over a weekend or if everybody was humouring him by speaking in English when he was around.  That didn't really make any sense, since all the other students at the school hate him, why would they care if he understood them?  I really have to admire what Mel Gibson has done in terms of presenting films in the language that would actually be spoken by the characters.  Maybe he'll direct the F&F flick and set this straight.

I think this movie takes place after some kind of war between USA and Japan and that the languages have melded into one that in includes fragments of the other because occasionally they use Japanese words.  Also, lots of foreigners have been displaced as a result of this war.  Rap star Bow Wow plays a typical L.A. hustler, except that he's in Tokyo.  Hero also quickly forms a bond with the local thug's girlfriend and this chick is not only physically ethnically ambiguous but also has an accent that's ranks among the world's hardest to place.  I guess after having Vin Diesel in the first flick they needed somebody with even more mysterious ethnicity.  All of this shows that something has happened to meld and mix Japan with so many other cultures.  I would've appreciated a scene showing this war like at the beginning of 2 Termin 2 Ator: Judgement Drift.

I think I already told you the plot, Hero and local thug's girlfriend fall in love, local thug not happy, decide to settle things with car races.  What sells this movie is the little moments.  I like how the local Tokyo thug is the Japanese equivalent of the same spoiled rich boy from the opening scene so that our Hero can take his class warrior act to an international level.  Outracing the bourgeoisie one nation at a time.

I love the way everybody seems to be able to tell that our Hero can drive well just by looking at him.  Car racing just finds this guy, he can go all around the world but it seems people will always just challenge him to a car race.  I'd love it if somebody tried to get into a dance off at some point, or just try old fashioned fisticuffs.  He'd probably just stare them down until they came back with their car.

Everywhere this guy goes people are willing to lend him their cars or buy him new cars and sponsor him in races.  When he first shows up in Tokyo he doesn't know how to do this driving style called "drifting" which is making you car slide around to manoeuvre tight Tokyo spaces.  Drifting also burns up lots of tires, which is ironic because Kyoto is so close it's like their pissing in the face of all those environmentalists.  Nobody does anything as crass as scream “Up your ass, Al Gore!”, but it’s implied.

Our Hero loses his first big race against the local thug because he can't drift yet.  But even after losing his first race another nicer gangster starts funding Our Hero and helping him train for a bigger race because the nice gangster can just tell this guy's got it in him.

The movie ends on an awesome note with a cameo from Vin Diesel.  After kicking everybody in Tokyo's ass at car racing Our Hero takes a break and become president of the local drift racing club.  His duties seem mostly administrative because when Bow Wow (treasurer of the club) tells him that somebody's here to race him Our Hero blows him off.  Then he finds out it’s Vin Diesel and agrees and the movie just ends with them revving up their engines.  I'm glad they didn't show the race. That would be forcing audiences to choose which racer hero in this franchise they liked more.  Like having Sean Connery show up at the end of Casino Royale and beat Craig's ass at poker, it would just make you realize you've rooting for a loser for the past hour and a half.  I also like that Hero has clearly accepted his true calling in the full-time racer world and is not wasting another 20 years in stupid-assed high school.

Yeah, fuck high school. That shit stands still. Go with a car, it moves fast.

If I have one criticism for these movies it's the rappers.  The first one had Ja Rule, the second had Ludacris, the third had Bow Wow.  These really aren't the charisma masters like DMX, Snoop, Busta Rhymes, P. Diddy and other rappers who've appeared in films recently.  I'm not sure why the Fast and Furious franchise scares quality rappers away.  These movies resemble a great number of rap videos as far as luxury vehicle, machismo, and partying go.  Maybe the term "co-starring" troubles them and it should be phrased as "featuring", a term with which they're more comfortable.

I’d also like them to get the standard of women back on track. In the first one you had not only Jordana Brewster, but also vintage Michelle Rodriguez, before all the jail time got her too rough-lookin’. After that, the girls kinda got uglier and uglier. I mean at this rate we’ll have Kirsten Dunst showing up in 5 Fast 5 Furious: Autobahn Blitz.

I have to say that overall what draws me to these movies is the sense of community that builds over the three films. These films really present a vision of multicultural friendship and encouragement. In the first film the racers say a couple of intimidating things to each other, but they always want the best for each other. Having read Danica Patrick’s autobiography, Crossing the Line, this is not entirely accurate about racers. But these films are set in a better tomorrow. The fast and furious racers come from all different ethnic and economic backgrounds but are united in their love of going fast and being furious. The only character who brings up cultural differences is the bad guy in Tokyo Drift and he’s portrayed as being a big asshole for treating Our Hero with disrespect because he’s white. Also, the casting ethnically ambiguous actors has become a great staple of this franchise, not to mention Paul Walker’s Ebonics and menu Spanish skills.

If they do make a fourth one, I’d like to know what happened to Michelle Rodriguez’s character form the first one. She was a mastered stunt driving car thief and she got away. I’m sure they could film it while she’s out on parole, or maybe incorporate her incarceration into the plot the way they do with pregnant actresses on television shows.

I am really excited to see where this exciting franchise takes us next and what vision of the future it will shock us with in telling the age old story of man's quest to go fast.