Film Appreciation hits the gas as Cody Hamman looks back at 2001's The Fast and the Furious.
I was blown away by the 1991 action film Point Break when I first watched it on VHS, and over the years I watched the movie several more times. I became very familiar with the ins and outs of that “FBI agent infiltrates a group of bank robbing surfers” story. So when the summer blockbuster action film The Fast and the Furious reached theatres in 2001, I enjoyed the movie largely because it was so similar to Point Break. This movie was basically “Point Break with cars”, a remake years before we got an actual, official remake. (And as of this writing, I still haven’t gotten around to watching the actual Point Break remake, which was released eight years ago. The poor word-of-mouth has kept me away, but I’ll watch it someday.)
Directed by Rob Cohen from a screenplay crafted by Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist, and David Ayer, The Fast and the Furious began with a Vibe magazine article called Racer X, written by Kenneth Li. Li had looked into the street racing phenomenon that had recently reached New York City after starting in California – and even though the article was only about people fixing up and racing their cars, Universal Pictures wanted a movie based on it. Well, the filmmakers could have taken the standard sports drama approach to the concept. A young man becomes aware of an activity / subculture, becomes enamored with it, gets into the racing world and ends up competing in The Big Race in the last act. But that’s not where Cohen’s mind went. He wanted the street racing concept to be mixed into a crime plot – and the filmmakers will readily admit that Point Break was a source of inspiration when putting that crime plot together. Ironically, Li’s article was originally going to be a crime piece, as someone had been stealing car parts from the racers he crossed paths with and he was trying to find out who the thief was, but that got edited out of the article.
It’s not car parts that are being stolen in the movie. It’s digital cameras and DVD players, which makes the movie seem dated by this point, but at the time of its release these things were a big deal. In fact, the thieves have managed to steal six million dollars worth of these products in just four robberies over the course of the last two months. These are quite daring heists, too. The thieves, driving Honda Civics, surround the trucks hauling the products, then one of them (identity obscured by dark clothes and a black helmet) will fire a harpoon through the truck’s windshield so they can jump from one of the cars onto the truck, infiltrate the cab through the busted windshield, incapacitate the driver, and drive the truck to wherever they unload the cargo. Their vehicles give away the fact that these thieves are from the street racing world... so, while working together to bring these robberies to an end, the LAPD - represented by Ted Levine - (Ayer moved the setting from New York City to Los Angeles with his rewrite, feeling the movie should take place where the street racing culture began) and the FBI - represented by Thom Barry - have decided that an LAPD officer should go undercover as a street racer to catch the criminals.
Paul Walker is our blonde Keanu Reeves stand-in, playing LAPD officer Brian O’Conner. Brian doesn’t have an easy entry into the street racing world, but he’s quickly able to gain the respect of experienced racer Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel as this story’s Patrick Swayze), a guy with a criminal past but a heart of gold. While spending time with Dom and his pals – including Dom’s girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), the bland Leon (Johnny Strong), and mechanical and tech wiz Jesse (Chad Lindberg) – Brian also starts to develop a romantic relationship with Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). Which doesn’t go over well with Dom’s buddy Vince (Matt Schulze), who has an unrequited interest in Mia.
While navigating this subculture, Brian comes to suspect that heavily-armed racer Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) is responsible for the robberies. But if you have watched Point Break, you know exactly how this is going to play out. Brian is going to lead the authorities on a raid of Tran’s base of operations... a raid that isn’t nearly as eventful as the one in Point Break... and discover that, while Tran is a bad guy, he’s not responsible for the highway robberies. Those robberies are, of course, being carried out by Dom and his crew.
Knowing how big and over-the-top The Fast and the Furious franchise has become, it’s somewhat surprising to look back at the first movie and see just how small and humble it was. The action is this movie is relatively small and quite sparse. There are some races here and there, and Cohen took a very stylistic approach to the first proper street race Brian participates in. There’s a couple fist fights, a car gets blown up. But there are a whole lot of scenes dedicated to character development and dialogue, giving the audience the chance to get to know and like the characters, and letting characters get to know and like each other. We come to care about these people. So it’s no surprise there were sequels and viewers kept going back to spend more time with them. It’s just mind-boggling that there have been so many sequels, and that they have gotten so insane.
The biggest action sequence is rightfully saved for the climactic moments, and the last twenty minutes or so are almost non-stop action. First, Brian realizes that Dom and his crew are criminals just in time to catch up with them as their latest highway robbery goes spectacularly wrong. As cars race and crash around a semi truck while characters climb around outside the truck and the driver blasts at them with a shotgun, that sequence has always made me think of The Road Warrior. And that sequence is quickly followed by a final high speed confrontation between Brian, Dom, Tran, and some henchmen. Building up to the last scene with Brian and Dom, which is very reminiscent of the last scene with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze in Point Break. The difference being the tone and the amount of hope the characters are left with.
The Fast and the Furious was a major financial success, and I contributed to that success by going to see it during its theatrical run and buying the DVD as soon as it was available. I have watched that DVD many times over the years, and continue to enjoy the film more than twenty years down the line... Although it’s baffling to me that it has somehow been more than twenty years since I was watching this movie on the big screen. I have enjoyed watching the franchise grow... or, I did enjoy watching it grow up to a point, but then things got so absurd that I stopped enjoying it as much. But the crazy turns the franchise have taken since just makes the first movie look better in retrospect. It still holds up, and now it’s an example of “old school action”, complete with car action sequences that were pulled off by stuntmen actually driving the cars. And smashing them up. There is some CGI on display, but nothing like we see in some of the sequels, and the stunts are impressive.
Making rip-offs is generally discouraged, but The Fast and the Furious is a Point Break rip-off that I am very grateful for.
No comments:
Post a Comment