The Fast and the Furious (2001) Review

The Fast and the Furious (2001) Review

The 10th movie in the Fast and Furious franchise, F9 is releasing in theaters on June 25th, 2021. This franchise is one of my favorite franchises of all time, so leading up to release of that movie. I’m going to be reviewing all of the movies leading up to F9. Today we are talking about the original, The Fast and the Furious. 

The Good: 

Like most of the movies in the franchise, this is a very dumb and an entertaining movie. The plot is very straight forward, and this franchise’s goal is to create fun movies. And while this one isn’t as fun as some of the later ones, it’s still a good bit of fun. It moves quickly, there is plenty of car action, and some nice characters. The movie is never boring for me, it moves from plot point to plot point quickly, not in a way that makes the movie feel rushed. 

And when you talk about this franchise, you have to talk about the car action. This movie turns 20 years old this year, and back then everything had to be practical. They couldn’t do CGI the way they do it now. So people were actually in these cars, racing them. And they are all very dynamic and you can see everything that is going on. They aren’t as over the top as the later ones, but I like the smaller racing sequences for this movie. 

Also, the characters for this movie are quite good. This was the movie that made Vin Diesel this a-list action star of the past 20 years. And he’s great as this antagonist type character, but has a good heart and cares about his family and friends. But I think the stand-out for this movie (and the franchise in general) is Brian O’Connor. Who just has this interesting role in these movies, and I think Paul Walker is great as this character. But I think they are great together, Dom and Brian are one of the best duos in movie history. Where they really care about one another, and that starts. 

The later movies (Fast Five and on), the movies got larger and larger in scale. And watching this movie, I think the smaller tone fits this franchise. I still really like the big dumb nature of the later sequels, but I thought the smaller tone fit this movie really well. Beyond that, the stakes for this movie are smaller. It’s about an undercover cop investigating a car racing street gang. It’s not about cars flying buildings. 

The Bad: 

For me, the big issue with this movie were the villains. Or I should be “villains”, because they are antagonists toward Dom, but they aren’t very interesting. They set up a relationship between them and Dom, but it doesn’t go anywhere. They could have removed them from the plot of this movie and it wouldn’t have changed. So whenever it would cut to them, I just didn’t care what was going on and wanted them to go back to the plot with Dom and Brian.

Also, this movie has a distinct style that was only in the first three movies of the franchise. And I don’t think that style really worked. And it felt dated to me, with the credits it’s rap music with quick cuts of cars. There’s even some of that, in the movie itself. And it was distracting to watch, it didn’t work for me at all. I get it, it was a style they did in the early 2000’s but watching in 2021, it didn’t work. 

Finally, some of the visuals for this movie really don’t work. They have the fire coming out of the back of the car. And I don’t think they had the budget to pull it off. And it made certain sequences look a bit cheesy and not real. 

Final Thoughts: In general, I like this franchise, so I like this movie. I have it, it delivers on the car action that you want. It introduces some great characters that have a nice dynamic with one another. But I think the villain, the style, and the CGI hold the movie back from being a top tier Fast and Furious movie. Also, next Wednesday is when my review for 2 Fast 2 Furious comes out, so look out for that. And by the way, these reviews will drop every Wednesday at 10:00 am. 

The Score: 7.9/10 (B)