A couple of months back I began watching the Fast and Furious films in preparation for
Furious 7, thinking I would get a
good laugh and maybe write a sarcastic blog post about them. Why? Because I’m
an asshole, that’s why. So imagine my surprise when I found myself genuinely falling in love with this stupid universe (the Fastverse, if you will). I’ve been
having a sort of rough year, and these films have been like comfort food to me
these past few months. Below is the definitive (meaning correct) ranking of the
series from best to worst. Enjoy.
7.) 2 Fast 2 Furious (John Singleton, 2003)
2 Fast 2 Furious
does the impossible and manages to be a film that is far stupider and more
cringer-inducing than the name 2 Fast 2
Furious. It gets points for being slightly more visually arresting than the
first film, but it loses all of them whenever a character spouts a line like, “it’s
a hoasis in here, breh,” which happens far too often.
6.) Fast & Furious (Justin Lin, 2009)
Fast
& Furious marks the
point where the Fast franchise began to develop from a series of loosely
connected films about street racing into a convoluted universe of James
Bond-style action. As a result, it mostly just functions as a stepping stone to
greater things. That would be okay if the film had a story that wasn’t a just
rehash of the original, or action scenes that weren’t sleep-inducing, but it
doesn't. Still, it's nice to see the the family reunited, and the cliiffhanger ending is still among the series best moments.
5.) The Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen, 2001)
The Fast and the
Furious is basically the Point Break
remake no one ever asked for, except Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze are
replaced with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, and surfing is replaced with street
racing. As an action film, it’s nowhere near as thrillingly as Kathryn Bigelow’s
film, but as the start of one of the most bizarrely moving familial dramas
since The Godfather, it gets the job
done.
Now, do I lose all
credibility for comparing The Fast
and the Furious to The Godfather?
4.) Fast & Furious 6 (Justin Lin, 2013)
It certainly feels like the Fast series stalling with this sixth installment, but that sense
of tire-spinning (hehe) is reflected in the characters. Over the course of this
series, Paul Walker and Vin Diesel have really grown into their characters, and
the bro-y behavior that plagued the first two films has been replaced with a
world-weariness that’s oddly affecting. To paraphrase one Danny Glover,
they are getting too old for this shit, but a desire to keep their family
together is what keeps them going.
Also, there’s a tank chase.
3.) The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (Justin Lin, 2006)
Story-wise, Tokyo
Drift is definitely a detour (hehe) for the series. It’s the only film in
the franchise that doesn’t feature Paul Walker, and Lucas Black is a pretty
poor replacement. But the plot doesn’t really matter here, as Tokyo Drift is far and away the most visually stunning film in the series.
The open roads that have defined the previous installments are replaced with
tight city streets, making for some stunning moments. One moment in particular, when a car chase leads to a drive through Shibuya Crossing, is probably the single most beautiful moment in the entire series
2.) Fast Five (Justin Lin, 2011)
Fast & Furious was the film that made the series into universe, but Fast Five is the one that showed us why
we should care, bringing back characters from all of the previous installments for
what is likely the most ridiculous heist in cinematic history. It’s the
ultimate family vacation. Fast Five
fully embraces the ridiculousness that has existed in the series all along,
which produces some of the best sequences in the series to date, most notably
the end heist sequence. They don’t steal money from the vault, they steal the
entire freakin’ vault and then drag it all around Rio. Top that.
1.) Furious 7 (James Wan, 2015)
I
don’t know. I've been feeling down a bit lately, and Furious 7 gave me exactly
what I needed. It made me happy, happier than any movie has made me in a very
longtime. I hear the complaints. The
plot is the most nonsensical and stupid in the series yet, which is saying something,
the same bad dialogue and clunky exposition remains, and at this point the
series has completely abandoned any illusion of realism, but I DON’T CARE. I loved
every second of it.
It’s
a film of many gleefully ridiculous moments, like The Rock driving an ambulance
into a drone or Paul Walker recreating the beginning of Uncharted 2 and running up the side of a bus as it slides off the
edge of a cliff. (Don’t worry about spoilers, those aren’t even among the ten
craziest scenes in this movie). But then there are the little moments that make
this franchise more than just brainless entertainment. Vin Diesel refusing
quality beer because he prefers Corona. A phone call between Paul Walker and
Jordana Brewster where she says, “it was such a bad sandwich,” recalling how they
met so many years ago.
It’s
all done in service of the series’ central themes of family and loyalty. Which,
of course, leads me to the ending. The subplot about Brian O’Connor struggling
to adapt to domestic life would have seemed like a natural progression under normal
circumstances, but it’s given a haunting power in the context of Paul Walker’s
death. “I don’t have friends, I got family” says Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto at one point,
summing up the entire series in a single line, but that family has suffered a
terrible loss. The franchise will undoubtedly carry on without Walker, but in Furious 7’s lovely final scene, it acknowledges
that it never would have made it this far without him.
And
that final shot. I tear up just thinking about it. It's perfect.
