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Fast, furious and fun
What this summertime romp lacks in brain power it makes up for in driving excitement.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 21, 2001
[Universal Studios]
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Dominic (Vin Diesel), left, hijacks delivery trucks. Brian (Paul Walker) is a police officer who infiltrates Dominic’s gang and falls in love with his sister.
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The Fast and the Furious is the guiltiest of movie pleasures, speeding past plot holes and laying creative skid marks with confident swagger. There is no doubt that this is a bad movie. Equally obvious is that Rob Cohen's film is a sloppy bundle of fun.
Speed thrills. It always has in the movies, from Keystone Kops chases to racing scenes in the otherwise moribund Driven. Cohen uses that basic cinematic element to concoct 105 minutes of meaningless excitement, guessing that he can seduce those viewers who usually demand something deeper. It works. The Fast and the Furious is over before you realize nothing was ever really there.
Part of the attraction is the film's setting in an underworld of renegade racers who convert lightweight compact cars into roaring street demons. Avenues are blocked from other traffic for showdowns to proceed, and the distant whine of police sirens sends everyone scrambling. The phenomenon is real; sources tell me such races regularly occur on Tampa Bay area bridges and back streets.
The Fast and the Furious runs the risk of being blamed whenever those activities come to light in the future. That won't be fair, but it does lend the movie a certain forbidden fruit appeal. The movie is rated PG-13, opening the door to young viewers anticipating or recently earning driver's licenses. Each scene should include one of those disclaimers that these stunts are performed by professional drivers on a closed course.
The plot could fit on a key ring. A gang of racers led by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) moonlights as delivery truck hijackers. Police officer Brian Spindler (Paul Walker) infiltrates the group with a few impressive wheel maneuvers and falls in love with Dominic's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). Anyone can guess what develops, although the introduction of an Asian racing gang adds tension and a few more car chases.
No message, no moral to the story, just human crash test dummies talking tough and driving tougher. Cohen choreographs some clever jolts, from cars speeding underneath semitrailer trucks to a marvelous shot in which a driver's hand grips a gearshift, sending an electrical current through the transmission and engine block, escaping through the squealing tires that result. It's an automotive version of Darren Aronofsky's heroin-rush coda in Requiem for a Dream and just as intoxicating.
Film passes through a projector at 24 frames per second and still barely keeps up with the high-octane maneuvers in Mr. Cohen's wild ride. These souped-up cars can cover a quarter-mile in seconds, yet Cohen stretches such a sprint into two minutes of multiple viewpoints and camera shutter tricks -- maybe even a violent crash, when we finally know enough about a character to care.
The role that holds the movie together is Diesel's dynamic posing as king of the street racers. He'll have a long movie career as a tough hombre, with an imposing physique and a voice that sounds as if it's attached to a rusty muffler. Walker, a more conventional pretty boy, nearly disappears when he's in the same frame. Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez make appealing love interests for guys with stronger lust for nitrous oxide fuel injection.
Summertime movie adventures are bound by duty to be dumb, usually living down to those expectations. Movies like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Mummy Returns lumber to that foregone conclusion under the weight of pretension. They aspire to the level of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars, mistakenly believing that piling on special effects hardware is all it takes. The Fast and the Furious keeps it simple and stupid, hellbent to make movie slummers of us all.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Fast and the Furious
- Grade: B-
- Director: Rob Cohen
- Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Rick Yune
- Screenplay: Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist, David Ayer
- Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity
- Running time: 105 min.
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