An action packed ride that will please gear-heads and non-enthusiasts alike

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2011)

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), a police officer, goes undercover at Harry's high performance auto parts store, The Racer's Edge, to infiltrate an illegal street racing subculture and figure out who is responsible for hijacking trucks loaded with expensive electronic merchandise. Armed with a highly modified Mitsubishi Eclipse, O'Conner enters the world of street-racers to meet the leader of a notorious gang led by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), who are suspected in the hijackings. After helping Toretto escape the police when their race is broken up, O'Conner wins his way into Toretto's good graces. Things go awry, however, after the gang attempts another hijacking, and O'Conner is compelled to move in and stop them. The NOS injected action/adventure film also stars Michelle Rodriguez (Letty), Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto), Chad Lindberg (Jesse), Johnny Strong (Leon) and Matt Schulze (Vince), and is sure to please fans of such genres as well as many a gear-head.
But The Fast and The Furious is, of course, not without the requisite, if not cliché, femme fatale motif to add a little suspense. Sure, Mia Toretto is not exactly fatale, but her role is just a docile variety of what you expect in a movie such as The Fast and The Furious: to create inner conflict in O'Conner and unwittingly—in her case at least—to challenge his priorities. Unlike other undercover movies such as Point Break or Breach, though, The Fast and The Furious will not keep you on the edge of your seat in suspense. But that is fine here. Despite the covert operations and confused loyalties of O'Conner, action is the point here—car action to specific. Everything else is supportive filler to keep the story moving.
What is perhaps one of the best treats of all in this movie is the final drag race. It is a classic stop light drag race, complete with a speeding train through a railroad crossing and an obstructing tractor trailer to add extra layers of excitement. After all, what good is a car movie without at least a few melodramatic crashes and close calls of the predictable variety. Who would have guessed a train would go speeding by mere seconds after O'Conner and Toretto go airborne—inexplicably—over the train tracks, or that a tractor trailer would just happen to impede a lane traffic as the pair go racing down the street at full throttle? Even though the special effects are simple here (no CGI), they still add to the excitement. Indeed, the action packed plot is focused on catching a gang of street racers who hijack trucks to support their lifestyle. The cars, then, are naturally as much a part of the supporting cast as the actors themselves, and the special effects and stunts are what make their action sequences so much fun to watch, while also supporting the story line.
In the end, The Fast and The Furious is well worth the addition to any action/adventure enthusiast's or gear-head's DVD collection. Even though the film may not be a classic hit, it has a well cast ensemble of actors who fulfill the sub-cultural niche this movie seeks to portray, using a fictional undercover story line of cops and robbers.