Review: The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Brian (Paul Walker) gets involved with illegal street racers, falling in with tough guy Dominic (Vin Diesel) and falling for his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). The thing is, Brian’s actually an undercover cop investigating truck hijackings believed to be the work of those involved in the illegal street racing scene. Brian suspects Dominic’s arsehole rival (Rick Yune), but his superiors (Ted Levine and Thom Barry) suspect that Brian’s goo-goo eyes for Mia are making him not see the forest for the trees, and think Dom and his crew are involved. Michelle Rodrigues plays Dom’s tough girl racer squeeze Letty, Matt Schulze is an a-hole member of Dom’s crew who is suspicious of Brian, and Ja Rule…is here too.

 

I’m not remotely a fan of this franchise (“Fast & Furious 7” was the first one I even liked!), but looking back on this 2001 Rob Cohen (the decent “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” and “Daylight”, the enjoyable “Dragonheart”) flick having seen what the series has gradually become, you can’t help but notice just how dull, small-time, and forgettable this one is. Scripted by the trio of Gary Scott Thompson (“Hollow Man”, “88 Minutes”), Erik Bergquist (strangely his sole credit to date), and David Ayer (“Training Day”, writer-director of the awful “Street Kings” and director of the rather good “End of Watch” and “Fury”), it’s really bland and clichéd, and so very much not my thing. It’s the kind of film that overdoses on dopey scenes where boofheads obsess over every detail of a car. Whoopee. It’s a car. It drives you places. Who gives a fuck? Not I, good sir. Not I.

 

Also not helping things is that director Cohen and cinematographer Ericson Core (“Daredevil”, and ironically the remake of “Point Break”) have no clue how to film the car racing scenes. At all. The dopey neon-lit undercarriage of the cars is bad enough (and even more present in the abysmal sequel “2 Fast 2 Furious”), but a lot of the action is shot in shaky-cam style and obnoxiously complex fashion. John Singleton had no clue, either in the subsequent film, but Cohen really ought to have studied “The French Connection”, “Bullitt”, or the first two “Mad Max” films and learn a thing or two. I’m sorry, but if you need to shake the camera so damn much during a car chase, you didn’t choreograph an exciting scene to begin with.

 

The performances aren’t much to crow about, with the late Paul Walker easily the weakest of the bunch. He overdoes the ‘dude brahhhhh’ Keanu Reeves crap big time. At least Vin Diesel has swagger and presence. He’s a funny one, Mr. Diesel, and by funny I mean frustrating. He often finds good characters for himself in movies that are almost always completely fucking awful. Here, he’s pretty much the whole show. He’s worth watching, the film isn’t. Jordana Brewster never really happened, probably due to some combination of poor choices and being hot but bland. In support, Thom Barry is fine, the talented Ted Levine is utterly wasted, and Matt Schulze makes for a decent ‘dumbfuck bound to get his arse handed to him every single time’. Ja Rule is the token hippity hopper of the film, and he’s a worse actor than his virtual replacement Ludacris in subsequent films. Ludacris can’t act, so…yeah. Also, Limp Bizkit’s phenomenally awful ‘Rollin’ plays at one point in the film, and fits the film like a glove. Aside from Diesel, the one thing I liked here was that the film keeps one important detail about Walker’s character a secret for the first 30 minutes. They do a good job of not arousing suspicion before that (unless you already know the plot going in, of course), full credit.

 

Honestly, this isn’t my thing and even for what it is, it’s not much of anything. The series got worse before it got better, admittedly, as John Singleton took all of what we see in this film and ramped up the ridiculosity to eleventy billion for the idiotic immediate sequel. What Rob Cohen originated here is a shit remake of “Point Break”, which makes it better than the subsequent “2 Fast 2 Furious”, but that’s not even faint praise, it’s not praise at all. This still stinks. Car enthusiasts and chicks who love blue eyes will salivate, anyone who cares about things like being an entertaining film, will be bored to tears. Mediocre acting, and awful handling of car race scenes, this one’s seriously forgettable, especially when you consider how much bigger (and in most cases rather better) the series would get.

 

Rating: C-