At least someone finally found a use for all of those ridiculous cars...

Rating: 4/10 (17 July 2001)

Yes, The Fast and the Furious is exactly what the previews showed. A bunch of real charmers who race around in those ridiculous cars that you always see driving down the road, desperately trying to be cool. Here you have a gang of guys with seemingly endless financial ability to pack into these cars every kind of racing part imaginable, but the difference between these and the cars you see bouncing down the road in your local town is that they actually race these ones. The story is made up of the old cop undercover as one of the stylish bad guys, but it just doesn't work here. If you want to see a good movie with a plot like that, watch Point Break.

Paul Walker plays Brian, the undercover cop in question, and Vin Diesel is Dominic Toretto, the leader of the gang that Brian is trying to infiltrate as he investigates a string of truck hijackings that are being perpetrated by a trio of extremely recognizable Hondas. Why would anyone in their right mind do so many robberies all with cars that have green lights underneath them? Is that just so that, when they get caught, the police will have no trouble linking them with every truck they've ever robbed? Not smart, guys. And besides that, you wouldn't think they'd feel too confident driving next to an 18-wheeler in a little tiny Honda.
(spoilers) And the, of course, you have the goofball romance. Brian falls in love with Mia, Dominic's sister, which complicates his job. Dominic himself confuses us by being the biggest badass in this whole gang of racers while dating the ugliest and bitchiest girl in the entire movie. The first race scene in the film is among the funniest scenes, because it involves four cars racing at 140-odd mph down the streets of Los Angeles, with hundreds of on-lookers. I love how they can do this without worrying about traffic or police, I guess that one guy with the police scanner was all that would be needed for such an extravaganza. Also look for director Rob Cohen as the pizza guy who shows up briefly in this scene. As far as traffic, they must have scanners for that, too, because you'll notice a total absence of any kind of traffic during the truck robberies. And it sure is nice of the truck drivers to drive smoothly and keep speed with the Hondas while they shoot crossbows into the cab and pull out the windshield.
This is an action movie for car people, because it is all about the kind of cars that these people fantasize about owning, for some reason. You can see the real version of this movie playing on main streets of towns all over the world, I'm sure. In Fresno, California, for example you can drive down Blackstone Avenue at 1am on a Saturday night, and in every other empty parking lot you'll see 10 or 12 guys standing forlornly around 2 or 3 cars that desperately try to look like the cars in this movie, and this is the reality that The Fast and the Furious exaggerates and tries to make glamorous - a bunch of guys trying to be cool by standing next to cars that are full of racing equipment that they don't use.
The Fast and the Furious is all about the Hollywood version of these guys, traveling around in packs and driving cars with tremendously souped-up engines, carrying thick wads of rubber band-bound cash in their shirt pockets, and spending the night life with women borrowed from the rock stars while they revel in the tremendous financial spoils of the race wars. While it is almost amusingly obvious how fake this all is, the movie doesn't pretend to be anything else. You know on your way in that this is an action film with a low IQ, and in that sense, the movie does deliver. The chase scenes are unmistakably exciting, however unrealistic they are, and it's fun to watch this whole plot about this idiot cop who recklessly tries to make his way into this gang.
The end of the film is utter nonsense, with Brian finally reaching his goal that he has been seeking and risking his life for during the entire film, and he gives it up as soon as he achieves it. It ends with Dominic in his dad's old race car, the one that he's always been afraid to drive, and he is at a stop light remembering that it's exactly a quarter of a mile to that railroad crossing up ahead. The movie once again proves how much it borrowed from Point Break as he decides to race this car to that crossing, and Brian inexplicably decides to race along-side him. They barely escape from the oncoming train, as was to be expected, and then just after Dominic wrecks his father's car, Brian gives him the keys to his own car (the one provided to him by the police for his undercover work), and the film ends just before the police arrive on the scene to strip Brian of his badge send him back to the community college.
The Fast and the Furious is a movie for immature action fans, the type who regard Van Damme films as their favorites, but it is almost worth watching just for the racing scenes. All of these scenes are overblown in some way, but they are almost always entertaining, at least on some morbidly amusing level. Luckily, you already know the type of drivel that this movie is, so at least you will be in the right state of mind when you watch it.