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Note: written originally for my film review website, www.shaunmunro.co.uk, thanks!
~~~
The Fast and the Furious series is something of a pop-culture milestone, inspiring everything from pale imitations (namely the reprehensible Euro-trash knock-off Redline) to several profitable video game series. Eight years and three sequels later, the series returns to its roots, with the “original parts” – namely a returning principal cast - yet this reunion with our old pals, ingeniously titled Fast and Furious, is something of a half-baked misfire, which stumbles only as much as it succeeds.
The film opens promisingly, throwing the viewer immediately into a well-staged action sequence in the Dominican Republic, where Bonnie and Clyde couple Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) hijack some fuel tanks by the most daring of means. However, the conclusion to the scene is, even for the standards of the series, utterly ludicrous, involving an exploding tanker hurtling towards our heroes at an interminable speed, whilst they attempt to drive under it as it flies through the air. If the ridiculousness of it won’t leave you laughing, the shoddy CGI will certainly leave you shaking your head in discontent.
Although chronologically, Fast and Furious is sandwiched between the second and third films, this film’s first scene of drama feels quite elegiac, as though our heroes are tired and winding down from a life on the run. However, this is soon enough thrown to the wind as a familiar cast member is perfunctorily killed off-screen, causing Dom to seek revenge, and in its course, meets up with old pal Bryan O’Connor (Paul Walker), wherein the two form an uneasy partnership to bring down the drug dealers responsible for the tragedy. Bryan, preposterously enough, is able to ingratiate himself with the bad guys, despite being a member of the FBI, and the consequent double-bind, in which Dom and Bryan cannot rat each other out to the perps, is also pretty unconvincing.
The tone then begins to shift all over the place; it is part investigative drama, with Diesel suddenly attaining the mindful eye of the most ardent character from CSI, and part existential meditation, with plenty of shots of people staring, glass-eyed, into the distance. Dom is forced to deal with the death of one of his comrades, yet mere scenes later he is seen flirting with women and downing shots. Perhaps this is a testament to how numbed and immunised Dom has become from our typical conceptions of anguish, but that would probably be giving the film far too much credit.
However, the action scenes, mostly brief as they are, are shot with a bravura style – as Walker chases down a perp over rooftops and tackles him onto a car (which, surely enough, causes the windows to explode) - the chaos is assuredly well-captured, and it is difficult to criticise the production from this perspective, but these brief moments of technical mastery cannot disguise a lackluster, overly serious narrative that takes most of the fun out of the proceedings.
As much as director Lin captures enough money shots for the film’s racing scenes, the hackneyed, disorientating editing style is intensely off-putting, and in the film’s second chase scene, an authoritative GPS system make the racers seem more like kids gripped to their PlayStations than actual drivers. The film leaves you waiting long enough for these races, and then can’t even deliver the visceral goods.
Unfortunately, this trend continue even in the film’s later stages – it leaves you waiting long enough for another chase, and then the payoff is merely a disappointingly brief race through a mine in order to escape detection by the authorities – it leaves you wanting so much more.
To be fair, there are some impressive moments throughout, namely Dom using a rather ingenious method to detonate a row of cars, and a savagely violent kill in the film’s climax, but these moments of trashy genius aren’t enough to resolve the film’s less endearing indulgences. For instance, Diesel is as much his superhero alter-ego Riddick as he is Toretto – he dives between speeding cars and takes bullets in the shoulder without a sign of pain – and such flagrant inconsistency with the film’s lingering approach to the death of one of its characters undoes that sentiment, and takes away the little care the audience might already have for Toretto’s own wellbeing, both mental and physical.
The film’s close almost satisfies, both with its moral agency (although who would expect such in a film like this), and its almost funereal approach, yet Lin closes his picture with the tease of an action scene, as well as another sequel, before promptly killing the picture and cutting to the credits. It is immensely frustrating, given the largely flavourless action preceding it.
Fast and Furious is perhaps a solid enough diversion for booze-filled lads on a Friday night, but there’s a distinct lack of care in a series which has credibility already verging on tenuous. Surely the worst installment in the series, this entry is at times too self-serious, and the desire to attempt to tell a story falls flat, at the cost of taut action and viewer satisfaction. Who thought that a film in this series would leave you wanting for more action? The performances are mostly fine – Diesel is his gravelly, muscle-bound self, and Walker and co. are similar eye-candy (of which there is plenty for both genders). Fast and Furious may well leave you wanting to suck down on a bottle of Corona, and the heterosexual males in the crowd will surely have a greater affinity for tight white tank tops, but this outing shows signs of a series that is, excuse the pun, running on empty.
5/10
Thanks for reading,
Reefer
~~~
The Fast and the Furious series is something of a pop-culture milestone, inspiring everything from pale imitations (namely the reprehensible Euro-trash knock-off Redline) to several profitable video game series. Eight years and three sequels later, the series returns to its roots, with the “original parts” – namely a returning principal cast - yet this reunion with our old pals, ingeniously titled Fast and Furious, is something of a half-baked misfire, which stumbles only as much as it succeeds.
The film opens promisingly, throwing the viewer immediately into a well-staged action sequence in the Dominican Republic, where Bonnie and Clyde couple Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) hijack some fuel tanks by the most daring of means. However, the conclusion to the scene is, even for the standards of the series, utterly ludicrous, involving an exploding tanker hurtling towards our heroes at an interminable speed, whilst they attempt to drive under it as it flies through the air. If the ridiculousness of it won’t leave you laughing, the shoddy CGI will certainly leave you shaking your head in discontent.
Although chronologically, Fast and Furious is sandwiched between the second and third films, this film’s first scene of drama feels quite elegiac, as though our heroes are tired and winding down from a life on the run. However, this is soon enough thrown to the wind as a familiar cast member is perfunctorily killed off-screen, causing Dom to seek revenge, and in its course, meets up with old pal Bryan O’Connor (Paul Walker), wherein the two form an uneasy partnership to bring down the drug dealers responsible for the tragedy. Bryan, preposterously enough, is able to ingratiate himself with the bad guys, despite being a member of the FBI, and the consequent double-bind, in which Dom and Bryan cannot rat each other out to the perps, is also pretty unconvincing.
The tone then begins to shift all over the place; it is part investigative drama, with Diesel suddenly attaining the mindful eye of the most ardent character from CSI, and part existential meditation, with plenty of shots of people staring, glass-eyed, into the distance. Dom is forced to deal with the death of one of his comrades, yet mere scenes later he is seen flirting with women and downing shots. Perhaps this is a testament to how numbed and immunised Dom has become from our typical conceptions of anguish, but that would probably be giving the film far too much credit.
However, the action scenes, mostly brief as they are, are shot with a bravura style – as Walker chases down a perp over rooftops and tackles him onto a car (which, surely enough, causes the windows to explode) - the chaos is assuredly well-captured, and it is difficult to criticise the production from this perspective, but these brief moments of technical mastery cannot disguise a lackluster, overly serious narrative that takes most of the fun out of the proceedings.
As much as director Lin captures enough money shots for the film’s racing scenes, the hackneyed, disorientating editing style is intensely off-putting, and in the film’s second chase scene, an authoritative GPS system make the racers seem more like kids gripped to their PlayStations than actual drivers. The film leaves you waiting long enough for these races, and then can’t even deliver the visceral goods.
Unfortunately, this trend continue even in the film’s later stages – it leaves you waiting long enough for another chase, and then the payoff is merely a disappointingly brief race through a mine in order to escape detection by the authorities – it leaves you wanting so much more.
To be fair, there are some impressive moments throughout, namely Dom using a rather ingenious method to detonate a row of cars, and a savagely violent kill in the film’s climax, but these moments of trashy genius aren’t enough to resolve the film’s less endearing indulgences. For instance, Diesel is as much his superhero alter-ego Riddick as he is Toretto – he dives between speeding cars and takes bullets in the shoulder without a sign of pain – and such flagrant inconsistency with the film’s lingering approach to the death of one of its characters undoes that sentiment, and takes away the little care the audience might already have for Toretto’s own wellbeing, both mental and physical.
The film’s close almost satisfies, both with its moral agency (although who would expect such in a film like this), and its almost funereal approach, yet Lin closes his picture with the tease of an action scene, as well as another sequel, before promptly killing the picture and cutting to the credits. It is immensely frustrating, given the largely flavourless action preceding it.
Fast and Furious is perhaps a solid enough diversion for booze-filled lads on a Friday night, but there’s a distinct lack of care in a series which has credibility already verging on tenuous. Surely the worst installment in the series, this entry is at times too self-serious, and the desire to attempt to tell a story falls flat, at the cost of taut action and viewer satisfaction. Who thought that a film in this series would leave you wanting for more action? The performances are mostly fine – Diesel is his gravelly, muscle-bound self, and Walker and co. are similar eye-candy (of which there is plenty for both genders). Fast and Furious may well leave you wanting to suck down on a bottle of Corona, and the heterosexual males in the crowd will surely have a greater affinity for tight white tank tops, but this outing shows signs of a series that is, excuse the pun, running on empty.
5/10
Thanks for reading,
Reefer
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
Note: written originally for my film review website, www.shaunmunro.co.uk, thanks!
~~~
The Fast and the Furious series is something of a pop-culture milestone, inspiring everything from pale imitations (namely the reprehensible Euro-trash knock-off Redline) to several profitable video game series. Eight years and three sequels later, the series returns to its roots, with the “original parts” – namely a returning principal cast - yet this reunion with our old pals, ingeniously titled Fast and Furious, is something of a half-baked misfire, which stumbles only as much as it succeeds.
The film opens promisingly, throwing the viewer immediately into a well-staged action sequence in the Dominican Republic, where Bonnie and Clyde couple Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) hijack some fuel tanks by the most daring of means. However, the conclusion to the scene is, even for the standards of the series, utterly ludicrous, involving an exploding tanker hurtling towards our heroes at an interminable speed, whilst they attempt to drive under it as it flies through the air. If the ridiculousness of it won’t leave you laughing, the shoddy CGI will certainly leave you shaking your head in discontent.
Although chronologically, Fast and Furious is sandwiched between the second and third films, this film’s first scene of drama feels quite elegiac, as though our heroes are tired and winding down from a life on the run. However, this is soon enough thrown to the wind as a familiar cast member is perfunctorily killed off-screen, causing Dom to seek revenge, and in its course, meets up with old pal Bryan O’Connor (Paul Walker), wherein the two form an uneasy partnership to bring down the drug dealers responsible for the tragedy. Bryan, preposterously enough, is able to ingratiate himself with the bad guys, despite being a member of the FBI, and the consequent double-bind, in which Dom and Bryan cannot rat each other out to the perps, is also pretty unconvincing.
The tone then begins to shift all over the place; it is part investigative drama, with Diesel suddenly attaining the mindful eye of the most ardent character from CSI, and part existential meditation, with plenty of shots of people staring, glass-eyed, into the distance. Dom is forced to deal with the death of one of his comrades, yet mere scenes later he is seen flirting with women and downing shots. Perhaps this is a testament to how numbed and immunised Dom has become from our typical conceptions of anguish, but that would probably be giving the film far too much credit.
However, the action scenes, mostly brief as they are, are shot with a bravura style – as Walker chases down a perp over rooftops and tackles him onto a car (which, surely enough, causes the windows to explode) - the chaos is assuredly well-captured, and it is difficult to criticise the production from this perspective, but these brief moments of technical mastery cannot disguise a lackluster, overly serious narrative that takes most of the fun out of the proceedings.
As much as director Lin captures enough money shots for the film’s racing scenes, the hackneyed, disorientating editing style is intensely off-putting, and in the film’s second chase scene, an authoritative GPS system make the racers seem more like kids gripped to their PlayStations than actual drivers. The film leaves you waiting long enough for these races, and then can’t even deliver the visceral goods.
Unfortunately, this trend continue even in the film’s later stages – it leaves you waiting long enough for another chase, and then the payoff is merely a disappointingly brief race through a mine in order to escape detection by the authorities – it leaves you wanting so much more.
To be fair, there are some impressive moments throughout, namely Dom using a rather ingenious method to detonate a row of cars, and a savagely violent kill in the film’s climax, but these moments of trashy genius aren’t enough to resolve the film’s less endearing indulgences. For instance, Diesel is as much his superhero alter-ego Riddick as he is Toretto – he dives between speeding cars and takes bullets in the shoulder without a sign of pain – and such flagrant inconsistency with the film’s lingering approach to the death of one of its characters undoes that sentiment, and takes away the little care the audience might already have for Toretto’s own wellbeing, both mental and physical.
The film’s close almost satisfies, both with its moral agency (although who would expect such in a film like this), and its almost funereal approach, yet Lin closes his picture with the tease of an action scene, as well as another sequel, before promptly killing the picture and cutting to the credits. It is immensely frustrating, given the largely flavourless action preceding it.
Fast and Furious is perhaps a solid enough diversion for booze-filled lads on a Friday night, but there’s a distinct lack of care in a series which has credibility already verging on tenuous. Surely the worst installment in the series, this entry is at times too self-serious, and the desire to attempt to tell a story falls flat, at the cost of taut action and viewer satisfaction. Who thought that a film in this series would leave you wanting for more action? The performances are mostly fine – Diesel is his gravelly, muscle-bound self, and Walker and co. are similar eye-candy (of which there is plenty for both genders). Fast and Furious may well leave you wanting to suck down on a bottle of Corona, and the heterosexual males in the crowd will surely have a greater affinity for tight white tank tops, but this outing shows signs of a series that is, excuse the pun, running on empty.
5/10
Thanks for reading,
Reefer
~~~
The Fast and the Furious series is something of a pop-culture milestone, inspiring everything from pale imitations (namely the reprehensible Euro-trash knock-off Redline) to several profitable video game series. Eight years and three sequels later, the series returns to its roots, with the “original parts” – namely a returning principal cast - yet this reunion with our old pals, ingeniously titled Fast and Furious, is something of a half-baked misfire, which stumbles only as much as it succeeds.
The film opens promisingly, throwing the viewer immediately into a well-staged action sequence in the Dominican Republic, where Bonnie and Clyde couple Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) hijack some fuel tanks by the most daring of means. However, the conclusion to the scene is, even for the standards of the series, utterly ludicrous, involving an exploding tanker hurtling towards our heroes at an interminable speed, whilst they attempt to drive under it as it flies through the air. If the ridiculousness of it won’t leave you laughing, the shoddy CGI will certainly leave you shaking your head in discontent.
Although chronologically, Fast and Furious is sandwiched between the second and third films, this film’s first scene of drama feels quite elegiac, as though our heroes are tired and winding down from a life on the run. However, this is soon enough thrown to the wind as a familiar cast member is perfunctorily killed off-screen, causing Dom to seek revenge, and in its course, meets up with old pal Bryan O’Connor (Paul Walker), wherein the two form an uneasy partnership to bring down the drug dealers responsible for the tragedy. Bryan, preposterously enough, is able to ingratiate himself with the bad guys, despite being a member of the FBI, and the consequent double-bind, in which Dom and Bryan cannot rat each other out to the perps, is also pretty unconvincing.
The tone then begins to shift all over the place; it is part investigative drama, with Diesel suddenly attaining the mindful eye of the most ardent character from CSI, and part existential meditation, with plenty of shots of people staring, glass-eyed, into the distance. Dom is forced to deal with the death of one of his comrades, yet mere scenes later he is seen flirting with women and downing shots. Perhaps this is a testament to how numbed and immunised Dom has become from our typical conceptions of anguish, but that would probably be giving the film far too much credit.
However, the action scenes, mostly brief as they are, are shot with a bravura style – as Walker chases down a perp over rooftops and tackles him onto a car (which, surely enough, causes the windows to explode) - the chaos is assuredly well-captured, and it is difficult to criticise the production from this perspective, but these brief moments of technical mastery cannot disguise a lackluster, overly serious narrative that takes most of the fun out of the proceedings.
As much as director Lin captures enough money shots for the film’s racing scenes, the hackneyed, disorientating editing style is intensely off-putting, and in the film’s second chase scene, an authoritative GPS system make the racers seem more like kids gripped to their PlayStations than actual drivers. The film leaves you waiting long enough for these races, and then can’t even deliver the visceral goods.
Unfortunately, this trend continue even in the film’s later stages – it leaves you waiting long enough for another chase, and then the payoff is merely a disappointingly brief race through a mine in order to escape detection by the authorities – it leaves you wanting so much more.
To be fair, there are some impressive moments throughout, namely Dom using a rather ingenious method to detonate a row of cars, and a savagely violent kill in the film’s climax, but these moments of trashy genius aren’t enough to resolve the film’s less endearing indulgences. For instance, Diesel is as much his superhero alter-ego Riddick as he is Toretto – he dives between speeding cars and takes bullets in the shoulder without a sign of pain – and such flagrant inconsistency with the film’s lingering approach to the death of one of its characters undoes that sentiment, and takes away the little care the audience might already have for Toretto’s own wellbeing, both mental and physical.
The film’s close almost satisfies, both with its moral agency (although who would expect such in a film like this), and its almost funereal approach, yet Lin closes his picture with the tease of an action scene, as well as another sequel, before promptly killing the picture and cutting to the credits. It is immensely frustrating, given the largely flavourless action preceding it.
Fast and Furious is perhaps a solid enough diversion for booze-filled lads on a Friday night, but there’s a distinct lack of care in a series which has credibility already verging on tenuous. Surely the worst installment in the series, this entry is at times too self-serious, and the desire to attempt to tell a story falls flat, at the cost of taut action and viewer satisfaction. Who thought that a film in this series would leave you wanting for more action? The performances are mostly fine – Diesel is his gravelly, muscle-bound self, and Walker and co. are similar eye-candy (of which there is plenty for both genders). Fast and Furious may well leave you wanting to suck down on a bottle of Corona, and the heterosexual males in the crowd will surely have a greater affinity for tight white tank tops, but this outing shows signs of a series that is, excuse the pun, running on empty.
5/10
Thanks for reading,
Reefer