Fast cars? Yes. Good plot? No. Worth Watching For the Sake of the Cars? Maybe. You Decide.

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2002)

The Fast and the Furious is a pure adrenaline filled action movie. A real tough guy film. Fast cars, great stunts. The works. Unfortunately, this can't completely make up for the other mistakes.
The casting of the Fast and the Furious was pretty bad. Vin Diesel can't act. People like him because he's tough. Some said he's the next Schwarzenegger. Yeah right. However, that's not what ruined the film. It's simply everyone else. Paul Walker is horrible especially. Michelle Rodriguez (Resident Evil) is okay. She was better in Resident evil. Somehow though, all these combinations were horrible.
The plot itself is just stupid. Anyone seeing this should focus on the stunts and cars, because obviously that's what the director did. I mean, it's one of the most predictable movies ever. And the ending was pretty dumb(though not as bad as it could be.)
Another thing about THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS is the rating. The rating board must have been pressured by the company who released THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS into a PG-13, because this film should've been rated R. I was reading a review a critic wrote, and he said that two male teenagers in front of him said, "Man, that should've been rated R." The critic said he couldn't agree more. Same here. Not even the small amount of violence in this film should make it R, but the language(I counted at least 3 F words), and the street racing. After this movie was released I saw on the news that some percentage of car accidents had gone up. I forget how much though.

Still, does all this make the FAST AND THE FURIOUS a pass? You can decide for yourself on your own taste. I personally, even if it was stupid, am glad for watching it just for the races, cars, and the HUGE stunt at the end. Other than that, I wouldn't watch it. But if you like cars and stunts, and really big, adrenaline pumped guy movies, than I wouldn't pass THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS UP just for the stupid stuff. It's not incredibly bad, because the above I mentioned makes up for it. It's a hard vote, but I'll give it a 3. Not for a film as a whole, but for the small sequences I loved in it. 3/5 stars.