The Whole Fast & Furious Franchise Marathon

Let me just put this out there first – I’m definitely no racer fanboy or petrolhead. Well, i can tell a Skyline from a Evo from a Silvia, but I have no interest in Formula One or cars in general (except for knowning enough to maintain my own).

I think the most i ever got into the scene was playing Gran Turismo and Need for Speed on the Playstation, and reading the  Initial D manga (not the entire series though).

Anyway, that just goes to explain why I’ve never watched the Fast and Furious. Never. Not a single one. Recently, though, with the news cycle about Paul Walker’s passing, my interest was piqued. I am, after all a huge fan of movies, so i thought why not give the series a spin.

So i started from the very beginning.

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Let me just say that all in all, this is a rather subpar and underwhelming movie. The acting is stilted, the storyline is a little laughable, but the one thing that made it memorable were the imported racing cars and sharp race scenes. Storyline is Paul Walker going undercover as a street racer (gee, i wonder how many time has this happened in real life) to investigate some theft involving DVD players (yes, DVD players. This was 2001).  Somewhere in the mix are some steroetypical Asian racer triads.

As passable as the movie was, i can see how this movie spawned a sequel. But not the ehole franchise, though. Far worse movies have had sequels. But its strong point were the race scenes, something most other action movies at that time don’t do as well.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Can’t remember anything about this installment except that it introduced Tyrese Gibson and featured Eva Mendes. And an over the top finale with a car flying off a ramp beside the river and landing on a moving boat. Yep, nothing unbelievable about that…

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Paul Walker did not star in this movie, but they introduced a new character called Lucas Black, a high school student who looks like a 28 year old. Black is probably the dumbest street racer in the history of streetracing – he accepts a race challenge with the rich kids in school. On THEIR turf. ALONE. Both cars get totalled, he gets sent overseas by his mother. His opponents get off scot-free.

Goes to Tokyo, doesn’t know how to drift, has no car, accepts a drifting challenge. Someone lends him a car, totals it and loses by like 4 hours. Dumbest street racer ever.

Anyway, it probably too a lot of guts for the producers to go to the home of drifting and make an AMerican movie about drifting, and film a race scene practically lifted from Initial D.

And Vin Diesel makes a cameo right at the end, to y’know, validate that this is a Fast & furious movie, not just some lame attempt to cash in on the international market…

Fast & Furious (2009)

Wait, did Vin Diesel just say ‘Han was family?’ how do we resolve that? Let’s make a prequel to movie 3 but a sequel to movie but call it movie 4! Got it? Good. Diesel and Walker and gang are back, and Lucas Black is thankfully forgotten and buried. Again, just like movie 2, there’s all this talk about gangsters and smuggling and blackmailing and hijacking, and there’s some racing in tunnels between Mexico and the US.

It ends with Diesel being sent to jail.

Fast Five (2011)

or simply the movie where they finally got tired of using the “&” symbol. Or as I call it, Fast Five – Rio Drift. How to inject interest into a stale franchise and appeal to a broader market? Let’s drop The Rock in! So now there’s TWO bald muscle heads. Actually I felt this was one of the best movies in the series so far, cause with the Rock it became more of an action movie and not just a racing movie. But the whole climatic scene about the 2 cars dragging the vault across the city, hur… what’s a Fast & Furious movie without logic defying scenes, right?

Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

Finally, the series brings itself ups the production values to summer blockbuster status, from the ‘cheap computer graphic effects’ of the past. The gang and Rock is back, bringing cast members from different movies (and yes, thankfully no Lucas Black). Overall pretty much more of the same, this time with even more unbelievable scenes – Vin Diesel can jump and fly long distances like Superman! Plane can drag cars along a runway that’s 12 miles long!

But the funniest bit about this movie was how they turned Ludacris from ‘comic relief’ to ‘tech guy’ and turned Tyrese Gibson from ‘Angry black man’ to ‘comic relief’. Vin Diesel, on the other hand, still plays the ‘Cannot act to save his life’ character.

Well, that’s it then. I haven’t watched Furious 7. but it did watch the parody movie called Superfast! As most of these movies, it wasn’t funny at all, and a little disrespectful in light of Paul Walker’s passing… but anyway.