If you recall, the first movie was called The Fast and the Furious. The second one was 2 Fast 2 Furious. This new entry to the franchise, now called Fast & Furious, has an even shorter attention span — no time for “the,” one or two of ‘em. Even the ampersand seems kind of tedious. Let me first admit that I’m ill equipped to review this movie. For starters I drive a Sentra. The paint’s faded and the windows don’t all roll down. The CD player stopped working eons ago. No spoiler can be found on its trunk. Second, I use my turn signal, a sad little character that is underused in the entire series. I railed against the previous Furious movies, including that festering neon distraction called Tokyo Drift. Despite my protests — ha! — sequels were made and here we are today.
The term car porn, which was first thrown at the ludicrous and fascinating Speed Racer, doesn’t seem to do this fourth Furious film justice. I think of it more as vehicular fantasy, like Star Wars of the streets: The dog-fighting hot rods might as well be space ships zipping through asteroid fields. A race through a border tunnel would require very few special effects to become the Death Star trenches. Then there’s Dominic Toretto, the film’s Jedi, who stands at a vacant intersection and perceives, through osmosis apparently, an accident that happened days before. We’re talking Star Wars here, which I’ll admit is a tangent, but it’s a useful jumping-off point to the keystone of Fast & Furious’ foolishness. Regard it as less of a modern-day action flick and more like a science fiction yarn, the nuts and bolts variety, and it becomes instantly more tolerable … likeable even. Notice, for instance, the first scene with hot rodders hijacking fuel from a big rig hauling a train of tankers. Some standard accessories: people hanging from hoods, fenders are dented, tires are blown out with shotguns. The explosions come at the end as a burning tanker bounces down the highway leaving fiery windows of opportunity for an elite driver to escape. And here’s a film with no shortage of elite drivers. Of course this is all implausible on a level so absurd that describing it would sterilize a generation. But ignore all the noise and what do you get? It’s a vehicular melodrama, a rock-infused opera to the pavement, a cross-section of America’s brazen infatuation with the automobile. I didn’t like the movie, but I respect its dedication to its subject.
The actors are persuasive forces in films this overtly lame. There’s Paul Walker as the dogged FBI agent, Brian O’Conner, called into duty on any assignment involving hot rods or beefed-up imports. He spends much of this fourth entry resolving a conflicted relationship with the Vin Diesel character, Dominic Toretto, who gurgles out pseudo-sexual one-liners to a leggy car enthusiast — “I admire all bodies, no matter the make.” And don’t try to tell me there’s no sexual undertones when a villain finds out Toretto was peeping on his engine: “You looked under my hood?!” the baddie yells, as if someone sharked him in public. O’Connor and Toretto — which sounds like a Carter-era muscle car: 1977 Dodge Torette with racing tires and candy-apple red paint — are working opposite ends of an investigation into a Mexican drug dealer who uses high-end cars and experienced street racers to bring heroine into the United States. The drug dealer uses an underground tunnel through a mountain along the U.S.-Mexico border. Nevermind that low-key minivans and non-descript sedans — as opposed to pimped-out Chevelles and M3s with new paint jobs — traffic drugs into this country every day. And nevermind that the drug dealer auditions his drivers on crowded Los Angeles streets while the actual trafficking route is basically a straight shot through the mountain. It’s like trying out for basketball to get on the football team, but whatever.
O’Connor is torn between his FBI responsibilities, and Toretto is blinded by rage. So tick their characters through this action vehicle that wouldn’t know human emotion if it T-boned it at 88 mph. But who cares, right? If you buy a ticket to this movie it’s to see the cars and the chases they’re subjected to on its highway to nowhere. I’m not entirely sure that the makers of Fast & Furious have ever seen a car chase on film before. I think they’ve just read the lists that include top chase films, and they vaguely recollect that they usually include Bullitt, although they’re not sure why. They fail to recognize that most car chases involve ugly cars, beaters that are a fan belt away from the scrap heap. That’s part of the appeal: a character pushing himself, and his vehicle, to the very breaking point. The Blues Brothers sustained an entire film in a 1974 Dodge Monaco. Gene Hackman stole a 1971 Pontiac LeMans to chase down (or is it up?) an elevated train in The French Connection. Even the visceral Ronin, a personal favorite, used smallish European autos of no discernible strength or beauty to chase through those tiny foreign streets.
So Furious uses beautiful, tricked-out cars, which I can forgive. I can’t forgive what it puts the cars through in the name of the almighty car chase. The chases here require nothing more than road and the grimacing faces of drivers as they manipulate their rides through traffic-jammed streets. The characters seem to be racing to no end, just to a point somewhere before the audience members get bored and begin texting. It’s a testament to the actors’ abilities that much of the action is shot in close-up on odometers, tachometers, clutch pedals and gear shifts — Sergio Leone never filmed this many close-ups of faces, yet here we are watching mashing gears and needles spike on round gauges. The chases just don’t have that sparkle to them. They just kinda exist, like that lamp in your living room that you couldn’t describe in any sort of detail even if you’ve had it for a decade. I’m reminded of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indy went from zeppelin to biplane to car in a chase that’s ridiculous, yes, but also inventive and spontaneous. Most chase films understand the dynamic between the characters and the road, and then employ a metaphor (the chase is inevitable redemption, or escape) to drive the plot forward. Furious uses the chase because the plot, and the series’ genealogy, requires it. And it overuses the nitrous gimmick, where the press of a button blasts the cars forward like rocket ships.
And as proof that the Fast & Furious movies, this one included, don’t know a thing about car chases, answer this: When was the last time you saw one on a “best movie car chase” list?
