Seeing these guys literally drive cars out of an airplane and parachute onto a windy European highway to chase terrorists is ridiculous and ridiculously cool, but it’s a much richer viewing experience when you’ve been with them from the beginning, when their biggest problems were winning street races. But these scenes are significantly more entertaining if you’ve seen 2 Fast 2 Furious, where he’s merely a good mechanic. If you have any awareness of pop culture, chances are you’ve seen the trailers for the recent F&F movies, and chances are you know they’ve mostly left the street racing behind long ago, but there’s a real joy in meeting Dom, Brian, Letty and the rest of Dom’s crew as a gang of petty thieves and street racers, and watching them slowly evolve into an elite team of superspies who have saved the world on multiple occasions, usually through a great deal of car-based superheroics.įor example, if you watch Furious 7, you’ll see Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) hack into the security systems of an Abu Dhabi mega-hotel with a device that hijacks every single camera in the world. Most importantly, the Fast & Furious films are absolutely genius in taking moments from previous films, then retextualizing them for jaw-dropping twists whose impact is maximized - or wholly dependent on - having seen those original scenes. The characters and their relationships evolve, of course, but there’s so much more: Bad guys become good guys characters die but then mysteriously return from the dead three movies later an increasing number of bald action superstars join the cast. The movies are chapters in a single, ongoing epic that continually draws upon the past in ways that are immensely satisfying if you start from the beginning (and that includes Tokyo Drift, which is so bad that none of the first two films’ stars appeared in it, other than the briefest of cameos by Diesel). But you’ll also be denying yourself the chance to experience the transcendent cinematic experience that the Fast & Furious franchise has to offer.Ī large part of it is simply the story, which is far more serialized than you might expect. I get it, and I admit if you skip to Fast Five and simply start watching from there, you’ll have five perfectly enjoyable viewing experiences. Watching four mediocre-to-bad movies as a gigantic prologue before five great movies may sound insane, or too heavy an investment to make for the payoff. (The next installment, simply titled F9, was due this May but has been delayed until 2021 for obvious reasons.) And you need to watch all of them, despite the fact the first four movies range from just fine to godawful. Since then, we’ve genuinely asked people this question, verbatim: “Have you accepted the Fast & Furious movies into your life?”īecause if you do, your life will be richer for it, especially if you watch them in their proper order: The Fast and the Furious (2001) 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) Fast & Furious (2009) Fast Five (2011) Fast & Furious 6 (2013) Furious 7 (2015) The Fate of the Furious (2017) and then last year’s delightful spinoff, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham, respectively. Over two days, we ate, drank and watched the epic saga of Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Connor ( the late Paul Walker ), Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), and their crew-family in an epic saga that left us mega-fans (and quite drunk). I was once an unbeliever myself, but was saved when my wife, for reasons unknown - I can only imagine it was divine inspiration - decided to get a few friends together to watch what was then all seven films in the Fast & Furious franchise. If I sound like I’m proselytizing, it’s because I am. Also, you’re missing out on one of the most sublime pleasures blockbuster action movies have to offer. If you believe the Fast & Furious movies are loud, dumb movies about loud, dumb drivers racing loud, dumb cars, you’re wrong - Vin Diesel speaks very quietly in all of them.
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