“New Model. Original Parts.” A nice way of saying Justin Lin’s Fast and Furious is more of the same. Forgive me if I’m not too excited by the anticipated reteaming of Paul Walker and Vin Diesel; the first Fast and the Furious wasn’t all that great, and the two Diesel-less sequels weren’t appreciably worse (or better).
So here’s a fourth film with a B-movie plot and theatrics, fast cars and scantily clad women, high-octane chases and slam-bang action, and who could expect (or want) anything else.
Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is back to his old tricks in the Dominican Republic, hijacking an eighteen-wheeler with his crew and lover Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) in the film’s first (and best) scene. When the local cops close in on his operations, he flees the country and leaves his crew behind.
Some time later, Dom learns that Letty has been murdered in LA; he returns to the US despite outstanding warrants to chase down those responsible. Meanwhile, FBI agent Brian O’Conner (Walker) is after a Mexican drug lord who runs street races in LA to find the best drivers to deliver his goods. You won’t be surprised to learn both Dom and Brian are hunting the same man, and they team up to find him.
About a third of the way through the picture, you know exactly where the rest of the film is headed. Action mostly delivers: aside from the opening scene there’s a nice video game-inspired race through downtown LA streets and a climatic run in Mexico.
When the characters are outside their vehicles, however, the film stumbles through misused shaky-cam and hyper-edited Bourne stylistics, complete with a bizarre gunfight where we don’t know who is shooting at who, or for that matter, why.
Not that the chase scene are all that more coherent; remember the days of Bullitt or The French Connection, where we could actually see what was going on? Long gone – who needs to understand a chase scene when you can feel it instead.
Logic is dealt a similar blow; why turn left to avoid an overturned, flaming rig tumbling down a mountain road, when you can time it just right and drive beneath it.
Cast is profoundly bland. I don’t know if Diesel or Walker had what it takes, but the first Fast and the Furious vaulted them to some level of stardom; they’ve made exactly one good film apiece since then (not counting Walker’s smallish role in Flags of our Fathers), Diesel in Lumet’s underrated Find Me Guilty and Walker in Running Scared.
Fast and Furious not only doesn’t buck that trend, but both actors seem to have less charisma here than the last time we saw them together. Jordana Brewster is a pretty young actress who deserves far better than what Hollywood has given her; here, she returns to the thankless role of Diesel’s sister, a character that could’ve been excised completely and the film wouldn’t miss a beat.
The bad guys, drug runners played by John Ortiz and Laz Alonso, manage to be even blander than our heroes. Given a chance to ham it up, they fail to elicit much hatred from the audience, resulting in some climatic scenes that are less satisfying than they ought to be.
By the end, they’re forgotten entirely. But what do you want? They’ve dropped a ‘the’ or two from the title and given us the same film we’ve seen three times before. Fans of series, if there are (m)any, should be satisfied.
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