The Fast and the Furious

Directed By: Rob Cohen
Other Notable Films From Cohen: Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, The Skulls, XXX
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster
Screenplay By: Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist, David Ayer
Movie Synopsis: A cop goes undercover to catch a team of high-end street racers who’ve been robbing 18-wheelers.
Signature Line: “You almost had me? You never had me. You never had your car.”

THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context

I can’t remember exactly when Larami and I watched The Fast and the Furious for the first time. (I know that we saw it in a theater, which means it must have been sometime between June and November of 2001. That’s about as narrow a window as I can give you.)

Nor do I recall whose idea it was that we see it. (I would assume it was mine, seeing as how Larami had never shown any sort of interest in street racing or Paul Walker or Michelle Rodriguez or men in tank tops earnestly saying things like “I live my life a quarter mile at a time,” all of which were things I loved at the time.)

And before working on this essay, I couldn’t even have told you what the prevailing sentiment around the movie was back then. (My guess would’ve been that critics hated it1 and audiences loved it.2)

But what I can tell you confidently more than two and a half decades later—and what I will remember for the rest of my life—is the way it sounds when a 1993 Ford Tempo gets its engine revved to the max. Because that’s exactly what I did when Larami and I got back in her car after the movie. I put the key in the ignition, started the car up, backed up out of the parking space, shifted into neutral, and then jammed the gas pedal down into the floorboard, sending the engine screaming to life.

Here’s the best part, though: As I sat there putting an unreasonable amount of stress on the pistons of that Tempo’s 4-cylinder, similar sounds started popping up across the parking lot. Because a slew of other people who’d just watched the movie felt compelled to do the exact same thing the moment they got back in their cars.

It was a completely unplanned, completely unfettered communal experience. And it was awesome. It was just such a wonderful feeling to know that the movie we’d all just watched had placed the exact same joy and excitement into our chests. And that’s really where my fondness for the Fast franchise stems from.

Because what greater purpose can a movie serve than connecting people, especially when we don’t expect it?

THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of The Fast and the Furious

2:26: It’s kind of neat (and a little sad) to think about how The Fast and the Furious franchise—a series that has now spanned 11 movies and generated more than $7 billion at the box office; a series where things have grown so gargantuan that guys redirect land torpedoes with their bare hands and drive cars in literal outer space—all started with a six-person crew hijacking 18-wheelers for small-scale electronics.

2:43: Here’s my (potentially hot) take on The Fast and the Furious: This part here—where Letty avoids crashing into a road-construction site by steering her car underneath an 18-wheeler(!!!), keeps it under there for several seconds while traveling at a high rate of speed, then swings it back out into the open road when it’s safe to do so—is the single most impressive (and important) stunt in the history of the franchise. It’s real-world skill, and real-world danger, you know what I mean?

3:13: This car: Hell yes. Fuck a hearse. This is how I want to be driven to my final resting place when I die. Plop me into the passenger’s seat and pull up to the graveyard doing 140 miles per hour. Don’t even stop the car—just undo my seatbelt, open my door, and then Tokyo Drift me right the fuck into my grave.

3:18: Paul Walker’s here. He plays Brian, the police officer tasked with going undercover to figure out who exactly is hijacking the 18-wheelers. I wish police officers looked like this in real life. They never do, though. They always have buzz cuts and Oakleys and very distinct farmer’s tans. And that’s a real shame.

3:19: P.S. One time back when I was a teacher, a kid set a fire in one of the campus bathrooms, so we had to call the fire department. The level of disappointment I felt in my bones when the firemen finally showed up and they looked like just some random dudes from Walmart and not like Morris Chestnut and Jay Hernandez in Ladder 49… man. It was crushing. What a shitty day that was.

4:24: The Fast and the Furious is centered around a core group of street racers who each have a unique skillset. Let’s do a scouting report of each of the members. There’s…