Review: Fast & Furious

#75 - Fast & Furious


Fast & Furious is the fourth installment of the franchise. It takes place five years after Brian let Dominic Toretto walk. Brian O'Conner now works for the FBI, and Dominic has been up to his antics south of the border. When he finds out Letty has been murdered, he returns to California to avenge her death. This brings Brian and Dom together. Letty came to Brian and asked him to help her take down a man named Braga, so that Dom could return home. This is what led to her death. Dom finds this out, and he works with Brian to finish what Letty started. When the duo finally completes their task, Dom is arrested and sent to jail for 25 years to life. That doesn't sit well with Brian, so the film ends with O'Conner, Mia, and their team hijacking the prison bus to help Toretto escape.

This film goes back to the original cast, and it also goes back to the original seriousness of the plot. Within the first 20 minutes of the film, Dom gets a call from his sister saying that Letty was killed. The entire film is Dom's revenge against Braga. The writers try to pepper in some humor with two dumb sidekicks that help the team out with a heist in the opening of the film and Dom's prison break at the end, but that's about it. It definitely doesn't have the lighthearted feel that 2 Fast 2 Furious has. I guess it's for the best though because this film is about bringing Dominic and Brian back together. They've been estranged for so long that they have forgotten how well they work as a team. This movie doesn't have that great of a plot, but it is a good segue into the next Fast and Furious film. It's also a film that has the big job of getting its audience to forget Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift ever happened. I don't know whose awful idea that was, but they need to be slapped. You will not see me review Tokyo Drift because I don't own it...thank god. The only good thing to come out of Tokyo Drift is Han.

Fast & Furious does a good job of bringing the two guys back together, and also reuniting them with Mia. The way Brian left Mia in the original film was cowardly and wrong, and I love that they reconnect in Fast & Furious. They have a very cold and unpleasant first meeting, which lines up perfectly with Brian never mentioning her in the second film while he's in Miami. The one scene I love between the two of them is in the diner when Mia says, "I'm sorry that you had to pretend to love me." Oh man, that line cuts like a knife, and you can see it on Brian's face. Awesome acting on behalf of Paul and Jordana. As the audience, you know that Brian loved Mia - that the only thing he was pretending was that he wasn't a cop. So the look on Paul Walker's face is perfect when she says that line. Mia and Brian are definitely a couple that you root for in these films.

The villain in this movie is definitely not as menacing as Carter Verone, but he is a whole new level of awful. He is the reason that Letty was murdered, so you hate the idea of him from the beginning. He seems to run the entire city AND the border of Mexico. He kills people without even blinking and doesn't feel the least bit sorry about it - "It's just good business" is how he puts it. To say that it's not obvious who Braga is just isn't true. From the first time I saw the film in theaters, I knew that the so called "number two" was actually Braga. I hate when things are obvious; it doesn't make the plot as interesting as it could be.

Overall, I give Fast & Furious 3.5 out of 5 stars.