RECENT WATCHES: Fast & Furious (2009)

“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” was still a box office success but it grossed one hundred million dollars less than its predecessor. Normally, this would simply mean the end of the series. In a Hollywood landscape more obsessed with on-going sagas than ever, Universal wasn't ready to give up. Instead, Vin Diesel would finally be talked into making a proper return to the role of Dom Torreto. This essentially made “Fast & Furious,” the fourth entry in the franchise, the first real sequel to the original. Justin Lin would be retained as director from “Tokyo Drift,” turning the car-centric franchise into a bigger, more international affair that more-or-less rebooted the series into a totally different type of blockbuster. 

Dom is up to his old tricks again, pulling off daring freeway heist with his gang in the Dominican Republic. After an especially dangerous stunt, he decides to go his separate ways from his long-time lover Letty. Shortly afterwards, she's seemingly killed, sending Dom on a roaring rampage of revenge. Meanwhile, re-instated FBI agent Brian O'Conner is on the trail of notorious drug lord, Braga. It's not long before Dom and Brian cross paths again, both ending up competing to become drivers for Braga. The two foes-turned-friends-turned-foes again must team-up to avenge Letty and take down the bad guy, on a quest that will take them all over North and Central America.

The change in priories represented by “Fast & Furious” is evident in one very big way: There's less focus on the cars. Oh, sure, there's still an extended race sequence and lots of vehicular mayhem. Driving cars fast is still the main characters' superpowers. The lack of lingering close-ups on shiny chrome and polished hubs shows that the fourth film was designed to be less of a car movie and more of a general action/adventure flick. You also see this in the story structure. Dom Toretto is centered in a standard revenge narrative, that sees him fighting off a drug cartel via punching, shooting, and explosions. The way Dom and Brian's adventure takes them all over Central America, in pursuit of a colorful bad guy, also can't help but be a little reminiscent of a James Bond flick. If the first three “Fast” flicks were somewhat trendy movies meant to capitalize on the early 2000's fascination with street racing, “Fast & Furious” clearly sought to push the franchise forward into a more generalized action movie direction. 

By this point in their careers, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were much more established talents. With an extra seven years on the silver screen, both are more assured in their performances and on-screen personas. Walker's introductory scene has him chasing a perp through a building, before both go sailing out a window onto a parked vehicle. His shows that Brian O'Connor is a more grizzled, experienced agent by this point. The older, more stubbly Walker fits into that role well, following expanding the character pass his dude-bro roots. Vin, meanwhile, has gotten more monstrously jacked since the first film. This furthers his transformation into a superhuman action hero, who threatens to crush random goons with engine blocks and tosses bad guys through car doors. This sphere of Schwarzeneggerian excess is exactly where someone like Diesel excels. 

Fittingly, the action here goes from the merely preposterous to utterly cartoonish. The opening freeway heist has Dom and his team jacking a truck along a perilous mountain road, a reasonable event by this series' measure. It ends with Dom rocketing his car underneath a flaming tanker as it rolls down the hill. The level of CGI effects work necessary to pull off such an elevated stunt is high, lending a degree of unreality to events early on. It is a bit of a shock to go from the more grounded stunt work in “Tokyo Drift” to the Marvel movie style mayhem here. Probably the moment that best balances this push-and-pull between an ostensibly realistic setting and utterly absurd action is a street race midway through the film. There's some cool stunt driving, weaving in and out of traffic, and more than a few over-the-top wrecks. 

Honestly, I found myself wondering throughout “Fast & Furious” if this kind of elevated action suited the series, at least as it existed up to this point. I found myself missing the more practical stunt driving that was the highlights of the first and third films. Yet, by the time “Fast & Furious” reaches its climatic chase, I was won over by it. That particular sequence is a claustrophobic race through a series of underground tunnels along the Mexican border, which is tensely directed by Justin Lin. The tight surroundings and speeding cars causes the suspense to ratchet up and leads to a few inventive set pieces. The sequence then climaxes with a moment so supremely silly – I wasn't kidding when I said that fast cars were Dom's superpower now – that I couldn't help but love it. 

By moving the story outside the realm of street racing, “Fast & Furious” finally graduates this franchise from totally predictable half-assed scripts to more standard blockbuster screenwriting. This does not mean the film leaves the melodrama of the first three installments behind. By putting them on opposite sides of the law again, Dom and Brian's rivalry is still centered in the story, now with the extra layer of betrayal. This climaxes during a wonderfully ridiculous wrestling match between the two, during which Vin slams Walker through a pantry. Naturally, Diesel seeking revenge for his murdered wife is exactly the kind of macho fantasy movies like this cater too. That includes a gorgeous new woman throwing herself at him – a pre-”Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot – that he naturally rebuffs. For what it's worth, there is a semi-decent twist concerning who the actual villain is, which shows more thought was definitely put into this one.

It seems safe to consider “Fast & Furious” a transitional film for this particular series. From here, these movies would go further over-the-top, as opposed to the doofy but basically earth-bounded earlier entries. This naturally tracks with the “Fast” films morphing from nothing but car porn to bigger budget action-fests intended for a more general audience. There's definitely some bumps along the way but, by the end, I found myself on the same page as this ridiculous spectacle. [7/10]