"The
Fast and the Furious" remembers summer movies from the days when
they were produced by American-International and played in drive-ins
on double features. It's slicker than films like "Grand Theft Auto,"
but it has the same kind of pirate spirit--it wants to raid its
betters and carry off the loot. It doesn't have a brain in its head,
but it has some great chase scenes, and includes the most incompetent
cop who ever went undercover.
According
to the In a World Guy, who narrates the trailer, the movie takes
place "In a world . . . beyond the law." It stars Vin Diesel, the
bald-headed, mug-faced action actor who looks like a muscular Otto
Preminger. He plays Toretto, a star of the forbidden sport of street
racing, and rockets his custom machine through Los Angeles at more
than 100 mph before pushing a button on the dashboard and really
accelerating, thanks to a nitrous oxide booster. He also runs
a bar where his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) serves "tuna salad
on white bread, no crusts" every day to Brian (Paul Walker), who
looks a little like white bread, no crusts himself.
Brian
hangs out there because he wants to break into street racing, and
because he likes Mia. Toretto's gang is hostile to him, beats him
up, disses him, and he comes back for more. He ends up winning Toretto's
friendship by saving him from the cops. The races involve cars four
abreast at speedway speeds down city streets. This would be difficult
in Chicago, but is easy in Los Angeles because, as everybody knows,
L.A. has no traffic and no cops.
Actually,
Brian is a cop, assigned to investigate a string of multimillion-dollar
truck hijackings. The hijackers surround an 18-wheeler with three
Honda Civics, shoot out the window on the passenger side, fire a
cable into the cab and climb into the truck at high speeds. This
makes for thrilling action sequences when it works, and an even
more thrilling action sequence when it doesn't, in a chase scene
that approaches but does not surpass the climax of "The Road Warriors."
During
the chases, we observe that there is no other traffic on
the highway--just the trucks and the Hondas. Anyone who has ever
driven a Honda next to an 18-wheeler will know that a Humvee is
the wiser choice, but never mind. And only a hopeless realist would
observe that leaping through the windshield of a speeding truck
is a dangerous and inefficient way of stealing VCRs. In Chicago,
the crooks are more prudent, and steal from parked trucks, warehouses
and other unmoving targets. Toretto should try it.
Anyway,
Brian at first seems just like a guy who wants to race, but is revealed
as a cop in an early scene, although not so early that the audience
has not guessed it. He works for a unit that has its undercover
headquarters in a Hollywood house, and as he enters it his boss
says, "Eddie Fisher built this house for Elizabeth Taylor in the
1950s." I am thinking: (1) This is almost certainly true or it would
not be said in a movie so stingy with dialogue, and (2) Is this
the first time Paul has seen his unit's office?
One
of the nice things about the movie is the way it tells a story and
explains its characters. It's a refreshing change from such no-plot,
all-action movies as "Gone in 60 Seconds." We learn a little about
Toretto's father and his childhood, and we see Paul and Mia falling
in love--although I think in theory you are not supposed to date
the sister of a guy you are undercover to investigate. Michelle
Rodriguez, the star of the underappreciated boxing movie "Girlfight,"
co-stars as a member of the hijack gang, and gets to land one solid
right on a guy's jaw, just to keep her credentials.
"The
Fast and the Furious" is not a great movie, but it delivers what
it promises to deliver, and knows that a chase scene is supposed
to be about something more than special effects. It has some of
that grandiose self-pitying dialogue we've treasured in movies like
this ever since "Rebel Without a Cause." "I live my life a quarter-mile
at a time," Toretto tells Brian. "For those 10 seconds, I'm free."
And, hey, even for the next 30 seconds, he's decelerating.
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