The Fast and the Furious
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Rob Cohen |
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| Distributor | Universal Studios |
| Honors | |
| A guilty pleasure with excess horsepower, The Fast and the Furious efficiently combines time-honored male fantasies (hot cars, hot women, hot action) into a vacuous plot of crystalline purity. It’s trash, but it’s fun trash, in which a hotshot Los Angeles cop named Brian (Paul Walker) infiltrates a gang of street racers suspected of fencing stolen goods from hijacked trucks. The gang leader is Dom (Vin Diesel), ex-con and reigning king of the street racers, who lives for those 10 seconds of freedom when his high-performance “rice rocket” (a highly… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
A guilty pleasure with excess horsepower, The Fast and the Furious efficiently combines time-honored male fantasies (hot cars, hot women, hot action) into a vacuous plot of crystalline purity. It’s trash, but it’s fun trash, in which a hotshot Los Angeles cop named Brian (Paul Walker) infiltrates a gang of street racers suspected of fencing stolen goods from hijacked trucks. The gang leader is Dom (Vin Diesel), ex-con and reigning king of the street racers, who lives for those 10 seconds of freedom when his high-performance “rice rocket” (a highly modified Asian import) hurtles toward another quarter-mile victory. Racing is street theater for a lawless youth subculture, and Dom is a star behind the wheel—charismatic, dangerous, and protective toward his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), who’s attracted to Brian as the newest member of Dom’s car-crazy team.
Director Rob Cohen treats this like Roman tragedy for MTV junkies, pushing every scene to adrenaline-pumping extremes; when his camera isn’t caressing a spectrum of nitrous oxide-enhanced dream machines, it’s ogling countless slim ‘n’ sexy race babes. The undercover-cop scenario cheaply borrows the split-loyalty theme perfected in Donnie Brasco; a rival Asian gang adds mystery and menace; and digital trickery is cleverly employed to explore the fuel-injected innards of the day-glo racecars. It’s about as substantial as a perfume ad, but just as alluring, and for heavy-metal maniacs of any age, Diesel’s superblown ‘69 Charger proves that Detroit muscle never goes out of style. —Jeff Shannon
Barnes and Noble
This supercharged melodrama was the year’s undisputed sleeper hit for good reason. Edgy and stylish, The Fast and the Furious goes beyond the extremely limited parameters of youth-oriented action films and very nearly attains the mythic quality associated with the rugged westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks. Teen-movie hunk Paul Walker, in his first leading role, plays a hotshot driver who joins a cultlike coterie of Los Angeles street racers and becomes the protégé of local legend Dominic Torreto (Vin Diesel), whose posse rules the ‘hood. Their sleek, souped-up cars are fueled as much with testosterone as with gasoline, and violent clashes with rival gangs account for the film’s non-racing action highlights. Rob Cohen, who previously directed Walker in The Skulls, deliberately and effectively contrasts the brash and enigmatic novice with his unsavory mentor, a thoroughgoing hoodlum who adheres rigidly to his own peculiar code of honor. With his shaved head, muscular physique, and deep bass voice, Diesel is quickly becoming the most imposing screen presence of his generation. He imbues Torreto with charisma to spare. With the less complex part, Walker displays a heretofore unsuspected star quality, and Jordana Brewster shines as Diesel’s loyal sister. Occasionally improbable to the point of absurdity, The Fast and the Furious nonetheless succeeds in achieving a sort of surreal authenticity that makes it not only believable but genuinely gripping. The Collectors Edition DVD offers a commentary by Cohen in addition to deleted scenes, a making-of documentary, a montage of visual effects used to enhance the first racing sequence, an interactive segment showing the same car stunt from eight different angles, a featurette on the film’s editing, storyboard-to-film comparisons, and several music videos Ed Hulse
