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The Fast and the Furious (2001 film)

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The Fast and the Furious
File:The Fast And The Furious Poster.jpg
The Fast and The Furious DVD cover
Directed byRob Cohen
Written byKen Li (magazine article Racer X)
Gary Scott Thompson
Erik Bergquist
David Ayer
Produced byNeal H. Moritz
StarringVin Diesel
Paul Walker
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release date
June 22 2001 (USA)
Running time
106 min.
LanguageEnglish
Budget$38,000,000 US (est.)

The Fast and the Furious is a 2001 action film starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, and directed by Rob Cohen.

Plot

Template:Spoiler

Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is the leader of a street racing gang that is under suspicion of hijacking trucks for their cargo of expensive electronic equipment. Undercover cop Brian O'Conner (Walker) attempts to find out who exactly is stealing the equipment by infiltrating the local racing community with the help of a local auto parts dealer, while falling for Dominic's younger sister Mia (Jordana Brewster).

After O'Conner loses his car to Toretto in a race by racing for "pink slips", a 1950s slang term for the registration documents for a car in the United States, and then loses it again when they are confronted by Toretto's rival Johnny Tran (Rick Yune), O'Conner tries to gain the trust of Toretto by working on repairing and upgrading a Toyota Supra to hand over to him. While doing this, O'Conner is constantly pressured by his superiors in the LAPD and the FBI to bring the investigation to a satisfactory close, leading him to face a stark choice between the community he has embedded himself into and the woman he has become close to or discarding his cover and discovering who from the street gangs are carrying out the hijackings.

File:Paul walker3.jpg
Vin Diesel and Paul Walker in The Fast and the Furious.

The plot is extremely similar to that of the 1991 film Point Break. Both films feature an undercover cop infiltrating a gang of underground competition enthusiasts in order to gain information about a series of heists. In both films the protagonist falls for a significant figure in the gang leader's life, forcing him to ultimately choose whether to take up the life of those he was tasked to spy upon.

The races are undoubtedly the setpieces of the movie and unfortunately are—by necessity— somewhat formulaic; they are mostly won by one of the racers firing nitrous oxide into the intake manifold at the last moment. The nitrous oxide systems, or NOS, play a big part in the movie, with O'Conner seeing it as vital that his car have more complex and powerful nitrous systems in an attempt to match or beat Toretto. NOS in the movie equally refers to Pennsylvania auto parts manufacturer Holley Motor Company and their NOS™ range of nitrous products or Nitrous Oxide in general.

The film was commercially successful and was, for an action film, reasonably well-received by critics as an enjoyable romp featuring some well-shot action scenes.

The Fast and the Furious is also the movie that is credited with sparking America's youth in souping up and tricking out Japanese imports when originally this was only popular with the actual hardcore street racers who inspired the movie. For this it has received a cult following. Some also blame the film for the increase in illegal street racing mostly due to the fact that the film does not show the dangers of illegal street racing but instead glorifies it. The movie is also looked down at by some, as they say that it is responsible with filling the streets up with Rice burners

Various modded and upgraded cars feature in the movie, including the following:

Trivia

  • Partly influenced by an article from Vibe by journalist Ken Li—Racer X—about the import street racing scene, where mainly Japanese road-going sports cars are "modded", upgraded and tuned beyond belief, and then raced at night on the public streets.
  • The director Rob Cohen went through the titles— "Nos", Redline and Street Wars— before settling upon The Fast and the Furious. To use this, they bought the rights for the title—but not the plot— to a 1954 movie of the same name.
  • Director Rob Cohen appears as the disgruntled "Pizza Boy" during the first streetrace sequence.

Sequel

A sequel—2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) found Walker reprising his role as Brian O'Conner, but Diesel, who had attained star status since the making of the first movie, did not return for the second film. This was reportedly due to Diesel's salary demands.


The follow-up to "2 Fast 2 Furious": currently titled 'The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift' (also known as 'Fast and Furious 3') will not feature either Vin Diesel or Paul Walker. Instead the film will be set in Japan & will feature a whole different set of characters. F&F3 will center around Drifting & JDM performance. Though the film was scheduled for release in Summer 2005, then originally pushed back to Summer 2007, it now has a tentative release date for Summer 2006. Some scenes will be filmed in downtown Los Angeles during January 2006 on Wilshire Boulevard, where street signs and banners in Japanese have been added.

The movie will be directed by Justin Lin, a rising indie movie director & actor.

See also

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