Fast & Furious Review

06 Apr 2009

Critics rating: 2 stars out of 5

Reviewed by Tom Charity , LOVEFiLM

How Fast and Furious is Fast and Furious? Too fast and furious to waste time quantifying, that's for sure.

If we’re keeping count, this would be MKIV, though it’s the first sequel to recall the stars of the original 2001 hit, Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez (Paul Walker made it to 2 Fast 2 Furious). Sadly, the Big Vin’s presence is more likely symptomatic of his stalled career ambitions than his high regard for this particular script – assuming such a document ever existed - in which case he’ll be delighted with the pay-off. Racking in an extraordinary $72 million in its opening weekend, Fast and Furious has broken box office records for April, and it’s the biggest opening for a Universal movie ever(!). Perhaps Diesel will get the chance to make his cherished Hannibal epic after all.

Fast and Furious

Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster

Director Justin Lin

Genres Action/Adventure

Run time 107 mins Certificate 12

Cast details

Michelle Rodriguez
Born: 12 Jul 1978
Bexar County, Texas

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I was a fan of The Fast And The Furious back in the days when we could afford to be free with the definite article. Even so, the US audience’s need for speed has taken everyone by surprise.

Part of me wants to think it’s vicarious thrills. Or pure nostalgia. At a time when US car sales have slumped by 40 percent or more, it’s a little ironic that a suped-up hotrod flick should be topping the box office charts.

More than anything, though, I think the credit has to go to the teaser trailer that has played in North American cinemas for the past two months, as well as on the internet and TV. The clip didn’t try to give us the entire movie in two minutes. Instead it consisted of a single extract from a dramatic heist sequence, in which a truck driver is separated from his load (a giant oil tanker) while driving up a mountain highway.

As it turns out that scene is the first in the movie, a ten-minute sequence that’s as thrilling and dynamic as anything the Bond guys have come up with in a long, long time. I know it made me want to see this film, and I hadn’t bothered with the last one.

Too bad it’s all downhill from there.

Fast & Furious: Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez

Director Justin Lin rarely takes his foot of the accelerator over the next 100 minutes, but the movie’s one-note pacing and posturing approach to dramatics soon become tedious.

The hand-me-down story involves Diesel’s fabled carjacker Dom Toretto returning to LA – where he’s hotter than Salma Hayek – to avenge an old friend who has been murdered by a drug cartel.

Toretto joins forces with cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) to infiltrate the gang – easily done, as it happens. All they have to do is win a street race, then they’re recruited to smuggle drugs through a secret mineshaft that connects Mexico with the US. This operation has to be accomplished at in a convoy at death-defying speeds, though the only reason I could think of for such a risky procedure is because that way it looks cooler.

I've seen more lifelike performances in videogames.

It looks, in fact, just like a videogame. And that goes for the entire movie, with its squealing race sequences like so many successive levels, interspersed with nuggets of elementary narrative information.

Mind you, I’ve seen more lifelike performances in videogames. Jordana Brewster – as Dom’s sister Mia – even manages to make Paul Walker look animated.

Admittedly, nobody is going to this movie for acting. It’s all about the surface, the velocity, and the machines. On those criteria, Fast and Furious probably deserves four out of five. So why was I so bored before the end? My advice, don’t look under the hood, there’s nothing there.

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