Fast & Furious

Director: Justin Lin
Screenwriters: Chris Morgan
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster
Running time: 107 mins
Certificate: 15

Aimed squarely at 15-year-old boys, Fast & Furious (why not Fourious?) is more about fetishising sleek hardware than it is creating a trailblazing blockbuster. It's puzzling as to why there's a big need to reunite Vin Diesel and Paul Walker; the pair are hardly Butch and Sundance, and this movie is destined to make cash regardless of who's in it. The cast and storyline for the two predecessors both seem to blur into one - the last one was in Tokyo and the one before had Tyrese, beyond that it's hard to grasp specifics.

Fast & Furious finds Dom Toretto (Diesel) living off the grid in the Dominican Republic with old flame Letty (Rodriguez). When Dom's nomadic life is flipped on its head, he goes back to Los Angeles on a revenge mission where he again meets up with Brian O'Connor. The pair resume their uneasy alliance from the first movie, eventually discovering a shared adversary in the form of drug lord Braga. Taking part in an illegal street race, they win a place on a crew of runners - headed by the short-fused Campos and Fenix - bringing heroin into the US from across the Mexican border.

A promising start is squandered as director Lin bolts too early with his rollercoaster action sequences. The opening set piece, a hijacking of a petrol tanker that teasingly reintroduces Diesel and Rodriguez, is more thrilling than anything that follows. There are spikes of adrenalised action later - a frantic pursuit involving Walker's FBI man atop the LA rooftops and a claustrophobic chase in tunnels running through desert mountains in Mexico - but when the highlight is in the opening 10 minutes, it's hardly worth sticking around for the rest of the film.

Bringing back the original four cast members lends the opportunity to expand on the makeshift family of misfits dynamic established in the first movie. However, sequel absentees and the plot for this instalment dictates that this never comes into focus. Brewster and Rodriguez are swiftly sidelined, leaving the (b)romance to Diesel and Walker. Dom and Brian's bond - one of stolen glances here, sly smirks there - is positively homoerotic. The hetero stakes are reasserted in one laughable club scene, though, where beautiful women are inexplicably kissing each other to throbbing bass.

There are few mainstream blockbusters that feature lead characters quite as unlovable as Dom and as wooden as Walker. There's not a thing to like about the pair, and Lin bottles the ending by letting Dom escape without paying for his actions. Is it really responsible of the filmmakers, considering who this film's target audience is, to say that it's fine to be a scumbag and a crook just as long as you're a badass like Vin Diesel? Ultimately, there is nothing on offer here but speed and fury. If you're tempted to revisit something of this ilk, watch The Fast And The Furious, or better still track down the vastly superior cop-in-the-criminal-underworld action flick Point Break.


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