~ by Michelle Demaras ~
There’s a lot to be said about the Fast and Furious films; narratively simple yet nothing short of culture defining. Everyone loves fast cars, excitement and danger, and F&F provides the right dose. As a girl growing up surrounded by gearheads, the F&F movies were part of my life. On family vacation, my dad took me to Neptune’s Net in California to re-enact a F&F scene. I got dragged to the later films like ‘F9: The Fast Saga‘ and ‘Fast X‘ where the plotlines had admittedly gone far off the rails. I didn’t think the original films had trips to space, or bombs rolling through Rome, but I recently got the chance to watch the 2001 original ‘The Fast and The Furious‘ at the cinema, to see for myself.
The opening feels like every car movie stereotype put together. Loud beats, neon colour saturation, bikini girls, and a parking lot full of cars out of a tuner-car magazine. I know it’s very of-its-time, but I was definitely cringing at the visuals. What is this, GTA? It’s hard not to be entertained by the cliché of it all, though. Paul Walker plays Brian Earl Spillner, a newbie on the street-racing scene who got leading-lady Mia’s attention, gotten on her old boyfriend Vince’s nerves, and gotten on top-dog Dominic Toretto’s radar. The scenes of the budding romance are sweet; Brian visits Mia’s lunch counter every day to order “tuna on white, no crust” as an excuse to spend a few minutes with her.
Tensions rise after a street-race turned police-chase where Dom and Brian end up in a rival gang’s territory, run by notorious Johnny Tran. Brian’s souped-up Mitsubishi Eclipse RS (which he just lost to Dom in the street race) ends up destroyed by Tran and his machine-gun wielding cousin. But Brian ends up on Dom’s good side for saving him from the cops, which is more important.
Toretto’s gang gears-up for a racing competition in the desert called ‘Race Wars’ and Brian is now part of the team. Since Brian’s car was destroyed, he still owes Dom a car capable of running the quarter mile drag race in 10 seconds or less, so he’s indebted. I took a liking to Dom’s girlfriend Letty at this point. The film doesn’t hide the sexism so prevalent in car culture, especially in racing. In the first drag race, Letty’s up, and her opponent’s idea of trash talk is sexist remarks. She’s unfazed, pushing up her sunglasses then absolutely smoking him. He’s left quiet, and she’s two grand richer. Letty’s cool demeanor solidified herself as my favourite character here.
At this point, I was engaged; 105 minutes of car chases and one liners isn’t hard to enjoy. I’d somehow gone into this 24 year old film with no knowledge of the plot, or any spoilers — so I nearly fell off my chair when new guy Brian turned out to be an undercover cop. Who knew the ‘Gearhead Bible’ had a plot twist! We’d seen earlier in the film that the gang has no love for the cops. The rest of the film you just inch closer to the edge of your seat, bracing for when the truth is going to slip that Brian is not one of them; he’s actually a bad guy, a cop.
There’s a whole subplot about stealing DVD players from big-rig trucks, but I hardly cared; it was obviously Dom and his crew! Only officer Brian couldn’t see the truth, that his new friends are actually the thieves. When Brian orders the raid and wrongful arrest of Johnny Tran, the stakes rise as it sets in motion a sequence of events that ends with the death of a member of Dom’s crew. Plus, the truck drivers are arming themselves against Dom’s gang. So it’s time to make a run for the Mexican border.
Dom and the gang gear-up for one more heist; the big score they’ve been waiting for. These scenes with the team together were my favourite, not because of the ‘family‘ Dom preached about in the later films, but because you can tell the girls are so much more badass.
Sinister black cars speeding next to trucks on the two-lane highway, attempting to hijack their coveted cargo. Vince makes a faulty leap onto a truck leading him and gets twisted in a steel cable, bloodied and dangling from the side of the truck. It was great to finally get an action scene with Mia skillfully speeding in the orange Supra while Brian makes a leap of faith to save Vince. I know these films are targeted to guys, but Mia was criminally underutilized. Then again, it’d be hard to have Dom be the poster-boy for the series if his little sister was always showing him up.
But then the big emotional payoff comes. The crew re-assembles, pulled over on the side of the road. Dom and Mia try to help Vince as his life dangles by a thread. In easily the most pivotal and tense moment in the movie, Brian reveals his true self. He calls for a MEDEVAC identifying himself as office Brian O’Conner, and undercover cop. Dom’s furrowed brow cycles through too many emotions to count as the sound of a train rushing past drowns out the ambient noise. Mia can’t even bring herself to hate Brian for being a liar — everything’s upside down.
Dom and Brian’s final showdown is laced with both resentment and respect. Their quarter-mile race over a railroad crossing is agonizingly tense, shown in slow motion, but there really is no winner as Dom crashes out. Considering the fact that Dom robs big-rigs, how ironic that a big-rig wrecks his ’69 Charger. With police sirens in the background, Dom is done for. That is until Brian hands him the keys to the Supra – the ‘ten-second’ car Brian owed him. Is Brian a man of his word, or has he been seduced by the dark side?
The target demographic for ‘The Fast and the Furious‘ was definitely not 16-year-old girls, but I can see why it’s such a cult classic. The hot cars, pretty girls, against an LA backdrop – cliche or not. Each character is magnetic, while having a surprising amount of emotional depth. For someone who started by watching the later films first, it’s surprising to see a genuine film about car culture where even the gang leaders seem authentic with worries, motivations and complexities.
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