After a few months off (that turned into almost four years), I've got back into the swing of things....
After a few months off (that turned into almost four years), I've got back into the swing of things... concentrating mostly on travel reviews this time around.
Member since:28.07.2000
Reviews:155
Members who trust:38
‘The Fast and the Furious’ is a film that delivers exactly what you expect – plenty of fast cars, scantily-clad women, Vin Diesel flexing his muscles and a pumping, bass-heavy soundtrack. Naturally, it never ever threatens to break any new ground in terms of plot or characterisation, but that’s not why I watched it in the first place! This is ideal viewing for that night in with mates and a beer or two, when all you want is a bit of background entertainment that doesn’t demand much concentration.
The plot is wafer thin, and seems to lurch along from event to event rather than being developed smoothly over the course of the film. The core of the film takes the form of street racing in and around Los Angeles, as various gangs (Latino, triad and local) vie for dominance and tune up their customised cars to ridiculous levels in the search for the extra second of pace over the quarter-mile drag tracks.
Vin Diesel is
Dominic Toretto, the leader of the local racers and a legend in street racing circles, but he is (of course) a man with a shady past. Suspected of involvement in auto theft on a grand scale, amongst other things, he leads a motley crew of racers: the boy mechanic who is technically gifted but has to battle learning disorders, the hard-faced mechanic girlfriend, and the tattooed, almost psychotic hard man Vince. Meanwhile, the fresh-faced Brian O’Conner (James Walker) appears on the scene and demands respect, throwing down the gauntlet and offering his own car as a prize in a street race.
Of course, what Toretto doesn’t know is that O’Conner is in fact an undercover cop with the specific task of finding evidence to link the street racers to the regular thefts of high-performance imported cars. Actually, that came out of the blue for me too, as this fact wasn’t introduced at the start of the film, and nor was it revealed bit by bit, but was instead just dropped in after about half an hour. Is this supposed to represent just how deep undercover O’Conner has gone? I’m not really sure, but it just seemed a bit stilted – a trait shared with other aspects of the film, as the script throws up standard situations and clichéd lines (‘I’ll die before I go back to jail’, ‘Break her heart and I’ll break your neck’, and so on) on a regular basis.
The obligatory love interest is provided by Toretto’s kid sister, who falls for O’Conner at first sight, a development that threatens to severely compromise the efficiency and success of the police operation. The situation becomes progressively more critical as the stakes are raised higher and higher at ‘Race Wars’, a legalised street racing event deep in the desert. O’Conner has become a valued part of the Toretto’s race team, but goes incredibly close to blowing his cover as he tries to find evidence to pin on his new colleagues. Of course, all of this builds up to a thundering race finale, as the gang attempts to pull off one final auto heist before cruising off into the sunset.
The actors do a solid enough job with the material they had to work with – as I said above, some of the lines are extremely cheesy and you know what is happening from start to finish, there are no great surprises or plot twists in this film. Vin Diesel struts around in his muscle tops, and comes across pretty well as a basically good but misunderstood individual, if not as complex as the plot tries to make out. He has done time for violent crime, but in one particularly schmaltzy scene, his reveals the truth behind it all, backed up by some extremely unsubtle mood music, the only time in the film that the score deviates from hard, fast techno! The ending is left quite open, but presumably this was designed to leave the path clear for the sequel, which is due to hit the big screen sometime in 2003.
All in all, this is a good laugh (although whether all the comic moments were intentional is open to question) which, to paraphrase the infamous adverts, does exactly what it says on the tin. The tuned engines roar and snort, the bodywork is chromed and polished to an almost blinding shine, and the characters are a pick and mix of stereotype gangsters, cops and bad boys. That said, I can think of worse ways to spend 90 minutes, so if you fancy an unchallenging evening’s viewing, sit back, relax, and put the pedal to the metal!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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
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
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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![The Fast And The Furious [HD DVD] [2001]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78158583.jpg "The Fast And The Furious [HD DVD] [2001]")
![3 Classic Racing Films of the Silver Screen: The Wild Ride (1960) / The Fast and the Furious (1954) / The Big Wheel (1949) [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78499914.jpg "3 Classic Racing Films of the Silver Screen: The Wild Ride (1960) / The Fast and the Furious (1954) / The Big Wheel (1949) [DVD]")
Dec 29th, 2002
very helpful by (100%):
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