The Fast and the Furious, Ranked

            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.