Car vs. adolescence:The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift(2006; dir. Justin Lin)
I am from Houston. Actor Lucas Black is from Decatur, Alabama. That is close enough that everything he does or says is 100% convincing to me.
LikeHalloween III,Tokyo Driftis only tangentially related to the rest of the series. After watchingF&Fget progressively busier and more overstuffed throughout parts four, five, and six, it's refreshing to watch a movie that's just about the kid fromSling Bladelearning that he doesn't have to keep wrecking cars to impress girls. Think of it as a palate cleanser: by bringing the stakes back down to Earth,Tokyo Driftis allowed to breathe and have more personality. It lets us enjoy the simple pleasures of a car-repair montage or watching drunk people make out at a party.
Stand-out vehicles
Now that we're in Japan, Japanese cars symbolize hometown pride and not alienation. The film's Tokyo villain prefers the 2002 Nissan Fairlady Z Z33 and a 2000 Mazda RX-7 Type RS FD. Meanwhile, Our Hero rocks a heavily modified 1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo while stateside. Until he trashes it. But unlike Vin Diesel, he adapts to his new circumstances and drives variations of the Nissan Silvia S-15 until the final confrontation. That's when he returns to his roots by renovating his dad's 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback, as one does.
What I learned about cars: You can make a whole movie out of turning.
你们还记得当第一次漂流吗big in the States? Man, the 2000s were something else.
Car vs. skyscraper:Furious 7(2015; dir. James Wan)
This is when director and human cash machine James Wan joins the series. Before helmingAquaman, he was the man behind theSaw,Conjuring, andInsidiousfranchises. Everything he touches turns into a pile of money.
Also, Jason Statham is in this. The Stath hunts Our Heroes from continent to continent because they put his villain brother in a coma.
Furious 7is the best in the series in part because it takes a page from the last threeMission: Impossiblefilms: it has just enough plot to tie together the explosions and spectacles. (Furious 7even shares a film editor and a cinematographer withMission: Impossible II.) Motivations are clear. The cast is kept to a manageable size. The stunts are given enough space and well-timed slow-motion so that they have weight.
Also, by not overwhelming us with plot and side characters, parts seven and eight have the leisure time to show us The Rock doing a Samoan war dance with his daughter's soccer team and respecting workplace boundaries with his attractive female coworker. I wonder if he'll be my friend.Also also, the jock jams are back. Sweet.
Stand-out vehicles
The only ride that matters inFurious 7is the $3.4 million Lykan HyperSport. It's apparently made of ground-up unicorns, and Our Guys trash it. They trash it good.
What I learned about cars: Cars are safe and so is jumping out of them while they are moving.
Over the past 14 hours, we've seen vehicles flip over, plow through walls, crash into trains, tumble down cliffs, fly between buildings, burst into flames, race while on fire, parachute from jumbo jets, and hit each other head-on at half the speed of sound. But in all that time, as best I can tell,only onenamed character is killed in a car. Everyone else walks away. IfF&Fhas an overarching lesson, it's that you're not justmore badassinside of a car than anywhere else—you'resafer, too.
Oh, and rolling out of a car while it's doing 90? Suuuuuuuper easy.
Car vs. submarine:Fate of the Furious(2017; dir. F. Gary Gray)
My boss says that no matter how pudding-adjacent my brain is now I can't just copy and paste my description ofFurious 7here. So. InFate(F8?) a villain's villain with questionable dreads blackmails Vin Diesel into joining her evil scheme to steal the cyber. She's played by Oscar-winner Charlize Theron, and she does this thing that villains have been doing lately where they try to convince the good guy that everything is their fault when it's clearly not. It's like gaslighting, except the gaslighter really believes it, too.
Stand-out vehicles
Uh, the submarine?
What I learned about cars: It’s better to obliterate your car than have it taken away from you.
Blowing up your ride and hurling its flaming wreckage into Havana Harbor is infinitely superior to it getting towed. Because there will always be more cars.
Hahahahaha fossil fuels will destroy us all.
Now that that's done, let's all pour out a 40 for Paul Walker. He died during a break from filmingFurious 7and gave the kind of low-key, unfussy performance that is perfect for anchoring the howling insanity that isFast & Furious.
If all these movies haven't sated your lust for dude-bros smashing hot cars, you're in luck: theF&Fspin-off movie,Hobbs & Shaw, comes out today. I haven't seen it yet because I'm still recuperating in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber hidden away in an underground fortress, but it's got The Rock and The Stath and Princess Margaret in it and that sounds pretty great to me. Plus Cars Technica editor Jonathan Gitlinsaw it and he liked it, and that Jonathan is a stand-up dude with reasonably OK taste in clothing and entertainment.
[Update 9:50am ET]:An earlier edition of this story listed Vin Diesel's heist car fromThe Fast and the Furiousas a Mazda RX-7 FD. The story has been updated to reflect—as several astute readers pointed out—that he actually drives a 1993 Honda Civic EJ1.
[Update 1:30pm ET 8/5/2019]:SawHobbs & Shawlast night. My prediction for the finalFast & Furiousmovie is an elderly Vin Diesel telling no one in particular "The whole world is family" before getting on a bus.
You mustlogin or create an accountto comment.