'Allo! I'm not contributing to Ciao for the time being but if you are bored / desperate / weird enou...
'Allo! I'm not contributing to Ciao for the time being but if you are bored / desperate / weird enough to wish to continue to read my ramblings, you can find me on Dooyoo under the user name plipplop. See you around! :P
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If Bridget Jones’ Diary is a “chick flick” then The Fast and The Furious must surely be a “dick flick”. Completely absent of the sorts of thing a filmmaker would normally throw in to appeal to the ladies, this is a film made purely for the fellas. Watching the Fast and The Furious is rather like watching Top Gear on speed – it’s completely non-stop, completely out of its skull and completely pointless. You’ll need your reading glasses to spot the paper-thin plot, but here it is anyway:
The Fast and The Furious is set amidst the Los Angeles speed racing circuit. Dominic Toretto is the current champion and local hero. Spending his days languishing in a back street grocery store, Toretto and his gang come to life at night, when they take to the city streets and race their super-charged cars. The stakes are high, with big cash up for grabs, respect and attitude to be earned and lost, and a certain element of danger. New boy Brian wants a piece of the action and quickly realises that if he is to become accepted on the circuits then he must earn the trust of Toretto, and quickly challenges him to a race. The outcome is inevitable, but when the race is raided by the LAPD, Brian and Toretto are thrown together and reluctantly become friends.
But Brian harbours a secret. His motives are not as simple as they appear – and he must play a deadly game of sides if he is to achieve his intentions. When it comes to the crunch, where will Brian’s loyalties lie – and will
he survive long enough to have them tested?
I’m going to struggle to find good things to say about this movie. Technically, it’s a relatively competent piece, with no glaring howlers. None of the stars are particularly unbelievable and the soundtrack is certainly in keeping with the tone of the film. So where does it go wrong? Well, let me see….
Firstly, The Fast and The Furious is completely uninteresting. Even if you’re into car chases, the whole piece is put together with such an uninspiring mood that within fifteen or twenty minutes, you’ll have absolutely no interest in what happens. The car races are so ridiculously fast that visually they are not in the least bit entertaining, relying instead on loads of noise and loud music to keep you entertained. Good guys? Bad guys? Who cares? They are all singularly uninteresting and there is so much testosterone in the air that you really get the feeling you should be somewhere else. Prattling, posturing and posing are the name of the day, and the filmmakers have done a superb job of making these road racers look like a right bunch of morons.
I think the automobile sponsors were probably Mattel, because most of the cars looked like something that Barbie’s Ken might zoom up in. Decorated in hideous transfers, with plastic spoilers and fins glued to every available orifice, only one question stands out – what’s the point? When listing his influences for the film, I didn’t hear the director mention Dick Dastardly, but the resemblance between this film and Wacky Races is undeniable. As they zip along the urban streets, at impossibly high speeds, all the drivers give themselves a bit of a buzz by pressing little red buttons on their steering wheels, which inject the engines with a Nitro boost. I’m sure it’s all quite realistic, but I’m afraid I kept expecting an umbrella to pop up or the wheels to jack up on huge stilts so that they could drive over one another, Muttley sniggering away in the passenger seat.
The whole thing is littered with cliches. The (apparent) bad guys are Orientals – now there’s a novelty. The (apparent) good guy has a beautiful sister who doesn’t sleep with her boyfriend’s mates – but I can sense an exception to that rule coming along. The police all bumble along like infidels and the racers zip in and out of spaces that a bicycle probably couldn’t get through. In true “dick flick” mentality, nearly all the blokes are ugly, but there are endless parades of barely dressed girls with enormous breasts and round shiny buttocks. It’s more transparent than a piece of glass – this film has a definite target audience and sticks to it like glue.
The film features a fair number of stunts, mostly performed in cars, but despite the hype, I thought these were very disappointing. Some of the high-speed sequences obviously relied on speeded up film – haven’t they come up with a way to avoid that yet? – and the rest were all rather mediocre. The climactic sequence involving three cars and a truck is quite good, but only because you want someone to get blasted with a shotgun.
The cast is relatively small – let’s face it, the cars are the stars in this film. Dominic Toretto is played by up and coming action actor Vin Diesel. Vin is relatively convincing in the role, though he seems to strain with some of the dialogue and I get the distinct impression that he was better placed running across a lunar landscape in Pitch Black than sitting in a sports car in The Fast And The Furious. Brian is played by other up and coming actor Paul Walker (the blue-eyed boy from The Skulls) and does his best with a bad script. Try closing your eyes in some of his scenes and you’ll notice the startling resemblance to Keanu Reeves’ voice in Bill And Ted (even harder – try opening them again). Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster are suitably gorgeous as the leading ladies – but don’t expect them to have a brain – that’s not part of the job description.
The soundtrack virtually drove me up the wall. I was attracted by the advertised claims of fast, loud, cool music, but it was clumsily arranged and often dominated the piece far too much. Heavy use of urban Hip Hop from the outset was excessive and out of pace with the film. Once the chases started, the film settled down into a slightly better Techno and Hard House selection, but the Hip Hop was never far away, and it’s latent attitude just added to the pomp and hyperbole of the characters’ egos.
The DVD release has an enormous selection of extras, most of which are unwarranted and to be honest the film is so poor that the extras can barely prop it up. The extras include a selection of deleted scenes, lots of stuff about the stunts, music videos, and various other mini-documentaries. If you can be bothered to navigate through the various menus after the film has finished then you probably deserve a medal. The film is apparently based on a press article written in a Los Angeles paper, which is reproduced on screen as one of the extras – but this is an extremely dull way of presenting the extra. It’s a bit like showing the novel of Jane Eyre on screen as an extra to the main movie.
At just over one hour and forty minutes, The Fast and The Furious will be too much for most people. Completely devoid of intelligence, the film isn’t even rewarding visually, and unless you’re happy to spend the time salivating over Vin and his selection of vests then you will probably hate this movie. Nonetheless, I appear to be in the minority – The Fast and the Furious 2 just moved into production.
Not Recommended
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Action/Adventure - Director: Gore Verbinski - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring:Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Chow Yun-Fat
I don't agree with you; I found the Fast and Furious very interesting, it got me hooked within the first few minutes. I must admit vin Diesel caught my attention and Johnny Strong as well; but had I not seen this movie, I would not have known who he was. Similarly with Johnny Strong. Your review was good thoughl descriptive. But I still don't agree with you, tfatf is indeed one of my favourite movies and always will be (even if it is unintelligible and devoid of substantial entertainment). and it was made for literal pennies, so considering how much they spent, I think it was excellent.
daisy1111 14.03.2003 13:23
my boyfriend loves this film, he even brought the vid. So with little hope in it i agreed to watch it. (just to shut him up!) And although, i agree it is made for the men, i still thought it was preety good, and would be happy to watch it again! Good op though. Gemz xx
Lynne83 08.01.2003 20:12
I loved this film and i agree with everything you say except that there is nothing in it to appeal to the ladie cos i find vin deasel and paul walker very appealing!!!
Advantages: Back to the cruising scene with great cars, great sound systems and great girls. Action packed Disadvantages: It's not as good as Fast and Furious, poor acting, unrealistic story
Advantages: Plenty of action, nice effects, Vin Diesel, no need to think too hard. Disadvantages: Not really any, unless you're expecting something that it's not.
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Feb 18th, 2002
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