Paul Walker and Vin Diesel still 'Fast & Furious'
It’s been quite a number of years since I’ve seen a Fast & Furious movie. I remember being pretty thoroughly unimpressed with the original movie and I saw the second one at a second run theater and found it pretty much the same, so I skipped Tokyo Drift. The latest installment in the turbo-charged franchise jumps on the bandwagon of the latest craze of just reverting to the original name when adding a new installment in a long-running series, although I have to admit it was a lot better than I expected.Granted, when I say a lot better than I expected, it’s important to keep that statement in perspective. A Fast & Furious movie getting three and a half Beans is a lot different from, ah, how should I say this, a normal movie getting three and a half Beans. Know what I mean? Kind of like how horror movies or bad comedies are rated differently from regular movies. For example, recently I have re-watched all of the old Police Academy movies in response to the horrifying news that Steve Guttenburg is attempting to put out a seventh sequel, and I awarded three Beans to Police Academy 3. This doesn’t mean that Police Academy 3 is a three-Bean movie, it means that it’s a three-Bean Police Academy movie.
Similarly, as far as the Fast and Furious movies go, I would venture to say that the newest installment may very well be the best one yet, although this is not exactly a huge compliment, because it’s a pretty lunkheaded action movie. Then again, the lunkheadedness has generally been the greatest appeal of the series in the first place.
[caption id="attachment_27801" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Now what in the world could possibly lead to a situation like this?"]
[/caption]Vin Diesel is back as Dominic Toretto, who has been living in Panama City for the past six years working on his Spanish, but when the girl that he loves is murdered, he returns to the U.S. where he is a wanted criminal. Our old friend Brian O’Conner, of course, has been reinstated in the FBI (you may remember him letting Dom escape, which is generally something that doesn’t go over so well with the Bureau). He is leading a task force in an attempt to bring down a massive drug cartel, and also now to track down Dom.
The first thing that O’Conner comes up with is a name – David Park – a scout who recruits street racers and who O’Conner is counting on to lead the FBI to the bad guys.
The connection is that the street racers that Park recruits are hired by the drug cartel to speed $60 million carloads of narcotics across the Mexican border into the U.S. There is a bizarre tunnel stunt thrown in for a nice car chase scenario, although all it really did for me was make it look like they were speeding through the Indiana Jones set. I’ve seen video games more effective at creating suspense, so it’s good that at least there are some good crashes, although they come after some occurrences that are so preposterous that I found myself laughing out loud. Wait until you see the stunts that Dom pulls in the tunnels! Even Frank Martin wouldn’t attempt such things!
But I digress. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m telling you about the plot of the movie, because as soon as the rice rockets show up the entire plot goes flying out the window so fast and so completely that the DVD should come with a disclaimer warning viewers to watch the movie with the windows open so the studio doesn’t get swamped with people demanding payment for windows shattered by the high velocity evacuation of the story.
But obviously, the story is just an excuse to string a lot of car chases into a movie and then to follow it up with a video game. I don’t know anything about fast and furious video games of either the past or the future, but they went so far as to animate a preview of the forthcoming video game right into the movie this time, so it doesn't require a whole lot of foresight to see one coming.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Fast & Furious is a high-speed car chase action movie, and in that way it delivers exactly what it promises.
[caption id="attachment_27803" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="FBI my ass, Walker! Go back to the beach!!"]
[/caption]Basically the movie is a dance club with car crashes, so if you’re into either of those things then you’re pretty likely to have a good time. Oh, and if you can believe Paul Walker as a seasoned FBI agent then you’ll believe anything and definitely you’ll have a great time. Just don’t operate any heavy machinery or, you know, leave the house without a helmet on.
Also, whether you like the movie or hate it, you have to admit that the last 20 minutes or so are pretty good. This is when Dom pulls his superhuman tunnel stunts, but there is also a great chase from Mexico back to the U.S. that involves everything from street racers to pickup trucks to those big off-road race trucks that can go over jumps like dirt bikes. Remember that movie Dust to Glory? The documentary about the Baja 1000? The last race in this movie looks a lot like that, and I mean that as a compliment.
Can I make a request, though? There is no reason to trick yourself into thinking that this is the end of the series, so when they make 5 Fast 5 Furious, can we get some monster trucks or something in there? I’d really get a kick out of that…
[caption id="attachment_27804" align="aligncenter" width="223" caption="3 Beans out of 5."]
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