Will the Fast and Furious franchise ever run out of gas?
Half-nude dancers gyrate on the hood of a souped-up Dodge Challenger. Imports and muscle cars vie for dominance on the mean streets of Los Angeles and the sun-washed avenues of Abu Dhabi. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) practices his brooding in the rearview mirror while the hulking Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) flexes impatiently, fingering the biggest mini-gun this side of the first Predator movie. Yes, another installment of the Fast and Furious series is upon us.
The car-crazy franchise, which began with Rob Cohen’s The Fast and the Furious in 2001, is one of the strangest success stories in showbiz history, going from the cinematic equivalent of a sputtering clunker to a sleek luxury sedan — the last one grossed more than $700 million worldwide — thanks to a combination of constant, meticulous reinvention and sheer goofball audacity.
From the very beginning, though, the true appeal of these movies has been their steadfast, un-ironic commitment to providing big dumb fun in two-hour doses. That’s why their ever-expanding fan base turns out in droves for every new installment. In short, these are films made for action junkies who know the difference between regular cheese and premium cheddar, and that distinction has already netted more than $2 billion at the box office.
Every Fast and Furious film so far has possessed its own distinct feeling and flavor. The first movie, inspired by a Vibe magazine article about the perilous culture of street racing, introduced viewers to Los Angeles Police Department Officer Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) as the undercover lawman infiltrated L.A.’s auto-fetishistic underworld, where he soon crossed paths with Dominic “Dom” Toretto, a champion street racer and part-time criminal with a multicultural crew of speed demons whose bonds go deeper than blood. Even though the film received mixed reviews, it grossed over $207 million on a relatively modest budget of $38 million by tapping into a lucrative niche audience of adolescent males and gear heads.
The sadly Diesel-less sequel, the ridiculously titled 2 Fast 2 Furious, moved the action to Florida and introduced Brian’s childhood friend Roman (Tyrese Gibson), an experienced wheelman whose quick wit and sharp reflexes prove instrumental in taking down Miami-based drug lord Carter Verone (Cole Hauser). The film, directed by John Singleton, suffered from a rushed production schedule and a script so shoddy it drove away Diesel, making it the franchise’s most negligible episode. It also grossed significantly less than its predecessor, leading to the radical quasi-reboot that was The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which adopted a new protagonist, Sean (Lucas Black), a reckless American teenager who becomes immersed in Japan’s drift racing scene after meeting Dom’s longtime friend and fellow racing enthusiast Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang).
Even though it appeared divorced from the official continuity save for a last-minute cameo from Diesel, Tokyo Drift actually paved the way for the franchise’s later critical and commercial resurgence by bringing on director Justin Lin, who would go on to helm the two most successful episodes of the series to date. It also serves as a lynchpin to the films’ slightly funky chronology, taking place shortly after the sixth installment, although this bold choice wouldn’t be made clear until nearly a decade later, during a jaw-dropping mid-credits stinger featuring the villainous Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham).
After stumbling with the overly somber fourth entry, unimaginatively titled Fast and Furious, which is notable mainly for reuniting Diesel and Walker, Lin roared back with what would become his magnum opus. If the rest of the series is premium cheddar, Fast Five is straight up pule (that’s the fanciest cheese in the world for those of you who aren’t hardcore turnophiles). This is the film that set aside the bluster of street racing and effectively switched genres, embracing the look and feel of a heist movie a la Oceans Eleven and The Italian Job. One sequence in particular involving a Dodge Charger dragging a massive bank vault through the streets of Rio rates an honorable mention in any discussion of the all-time great cinematic car chases.
Fast and Furious 6, also directed by Lin, continued the international intrigue angle, pitting Dom’s family of friends, now reluctant government agents, against a cadre of globetrotting mercenaries run by Deckard’s younger brother Owen (Luke Evans, best known as Bard the Bowman in the Hobbit trilogy). It wasn’t quite the breath of fresh air that Fast Five was, but it still had its moments, including a physics-defying highway chase involving a tank and an absurd final battle set on an airstrip that seemed to go on for dozens of miles.
So how will Furious 7, which is expected to enjoy a nine-figure opening weekend, stack up against its predecessors? The film boasts a new director, James Wan, whose previous credits include modestly budgeted horror hits Saw, The Conjuring and the first two Insidious films, as well as the underrated Kevin Bacon vigilante thriller Death Sentence. It will be interesting to see what the notoriously frugal filmmaker is able to accomplish with a blockbuster budget.
The true test of the movie’s quality, however, will be whether or not it serves as a worthy send-off to the late Paul Walker, whose untimely death in 2013 no doubt haunts every frame of the finished film. Early reviews have been largely positive so far — a rarity for this resolutely populist franchise — with a few notoriously stonehearted critics even confessing to shedding tears during the final shot, which is rumored to be a loving tribute to the actor, who had already filmed the bulk of his scenes prior to the car accident that claimed his life (Walker’s two brothers were later asked to serve as stand-ins and Peter Jackson’s effects company Weta Digital allegedly provided CG augmentation). Even if the film itself disappoints, its very existence sends a well-intentioned but slightly ghoulish message: Not even death can slow this franchise down.
Landon McDonald is a graduate student studying public relations. His column, “Screen Break,” runs Fridays.