Fast and Furious

Fast and Furious. Justin Lin. 2009. ⚁

[ten minutes pass]

Now, this is how you start one of these movies: Lots of really stupid and stupidly fun highway action. (The CGI is horrible, though, even for a 2009 movie.)

I started watching these movies because I wanted a contrast to, well, serious movies, and the first F&F movie was just about perfect. And then the second and the third movie made me lose the will to live.

But we’re back on track now? *crosses fingers*

It’s by the same movie as the really boring Tokyo Drift movie, though:

Which didn’t make much money. So why did they let him make another one?

Oh! But this one did make a lot of money, so whatever their reasons were for giving him a second chance, it did pay off.

[fifteen minutes pass]

Ah, so basically all the characters from the first movie is back? Including Diesel and Parker. I guess that’s why this was green-lit.

But after the initial action scene, this movie drags. Draaaaags. And not in a good way (no, not that way and not that way either). It’s just all … getting caught up with the “plot” which I think is pretty superfluous anyway.

But perhaps there’ll be a pay-off.

[ten minutes pass]

I don’t know… I think it lacks… rhythm? I’m not really talking about how Lin is making a cut once per second, but just how it all fits together. Like, when ex-bleach blond(e) guy rolled into the garage with all the (presumably) cool cars — that was an opportunity to play some “dope” music and fuck around with sensual shots of the cars. And there was basically nothing.

Or in the montage when ex-bleach blond(e) guy and Dom were fixing up their cars — it was just hard to get hard about that, or even tell what they were doing, or even, on a basic level, to tell the two sets apart.

Lin… isn’t a good director. He’s no Cohen. It’s just a jumble of images instead of a synaesthetic overload.

It’s also weird, casting wise — all the drivers (so far) are male, which goes counter to the first two movies, at least.

[half an hour passes]

This is better than the previous two er episodes — but it’s still a really, really bad movie. Some of the scenes almost work, but there’s so much tedium in-between the stuff that’s almost fun…

[the end]

Look, I would have been fine with a movie that was all guys and gals driving their cars around, interspersed with scenes of them adding more gadgets to the engines of their cars, but apparently that’s too expensive to film? So instead this movie is 90% guys sitting around talking to each other, being angsty and stuff.

So I get why this movie is this way, but I only hope that the next movie has a bigger budget so that there’ll be more driving around. And not an end scene like this one has, with CGI cars in CGI tunnels. But I guess that may be what the target audience likes, anyway? Make movies more like video games?

ME AM LIKE DRIVING CARS AROUND ME AM GEARHEAD

Hm… should I watch the next movie in this series now or one of the Derek Jarman movies I got on a 2K box set the other month? Hm… It’s been a while since I watched The Last of England…