Fast and Furious – Film Review
Posted on 14. Apr, 2009 by Administrator in Film/TV
by Todd Gilchrist
Fast & Furious recalls a time in movie-going history when audiences had yet to determine the A-list action stars from their lesser competition – and because of that, it’s intensely hard to dislike. In the 1980s and early ‘90s, there were all sorts of aspiring heroes trying to win your hearts while they beat the bad guys, and with good reason many of them eventually retreated into the straight-to-video ether or disappeared from view altogether. But that didn’t make their cinematic contributions valueless, and Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, the would-be stars of the original The Fast and the Furious who outgrew the franchise in favor of more “challenging” fare and then returned to it after their respective careers lulled, have carved out a similarly endearing, if not altogether lasting niche as this generation’s equivalent of someone like Dolph Lundgren or Jean-Claude Van Damme. Appropriately, their latest movie possesses that same, certain, scruffy, undeniably populist appeal that isn’t likely to net much critical acclaim or win over anyone truly interested in thinking during their two hours in a darkened theater. That said, it’s guaranteed to provide simple, straightforward thrills for anyone seeking temporary distraction from the routine and monotony of a life not lived through the window of a candy-colored automobile outfitted with enough muscle to blow every other car off of the road.
The movie’s plot really means nothing, and its details are largely obscured by the fact that Walker and Diesel have been reunited; “new model, original parts” trumpets its advertising campaign. Not unlike the first two films, there’s an understated, sensitive (for dudes, that is) camaraderie that emerges amidst Fast & Furious’ relentless masculine posturing, as well as a considerably clunkier crime story that provides a framework for its series of races, chases, and pursuits. Though Diesel physically outweighs his co-star by a wide margin, it’s Walker who feels like the film’s coiled spring, throwing himself literally into both physical and vehicular altercations with a respectable level of determination. Meanwhile, Diesel oozes the kind of cool charisma that, decades earlier, would have earned him top billing for years to come, but it fails to remind audiences why he ever attracted so much attention
in the first place.
Since the first film in the series championed its use of CGI to enhance the driving sequences, it should come as little surprise that its fourth feels no more inclined than its predecessors to put actual people in cars on real streets in order to achieve its high-octane thrills. But because the second and third Bourne movies did so, and Death Proof almost single-handedly rekindled the stunt driving industry, Fast & Furious feels more like a video game than a real car movie, especially when half of the action in a given sequence is represented by a computer-generated GPS map, or other scenes are conceived in settings that are almost impossible to create in three dimensions.
But then again, who needs that many? Both Diesel and Walker have been doing okay in roles that only have one or two, and should have no trouble keeping their careers moving forward after this – even if in most of their scenes, they weren’t actually moving at all. Ultimately, that’s all Fast & Furious is – a flat representation or an impersonation rather than a real, white-knuckle race. Whether or not you like the movie relies on how much you care, creatively speaking, that its tank starts on empty. But suffice it to say that after four installments and eight years, there’s something vaguely admirable about the fact that the Fast & Furious films haven’t lost one ounce of the slickness, spectacle, or irresistible silliness that they started with.
