The Fast and the Furious

We're well into the summer movie season and varoom...varoom-- we've got an obvious summer franchise retrospective showing for one day and one time. This franchise is the 15th anniversary of "The Fast and the Furious" released back in 2001. 2001! It is so difficult to believe that this franchise is 15 years old! This is the film that started the whole phenomenon. Suffice it to say that who knew that this franchise would generate the box office receipts it did?

Los Angeles street racer Dominic 'Dom' Toretto (Vin Diesel) falls under the suspicion of the LAPD as a string of high-speed electronics truck robberies rocks the area. Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker), an officer of the LAPD, joins the ranks of Toretto's highly skilled racing crew undercover to find evidence to convict Toretto. However, O'Connor finds himself both enamored with this new world and falls in love with Toretto's sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster). As a rival racing crew, headed up by Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) begins to gain strength, O'Connor must decide where his loyalties really lie.

Others to round out the cast are Michelle Rodriguez as Letty, girlfriend of Toretto, Chad Lindberg as Jesse, Johnny Strong as Leon, Matt Schulze as Vince, Ted Levine as Sgt. Tanner, Ja Rule as Edwin, Vyto Ruginis as Harry, Thom Barry as Agent Bilkins, Stanton Rutledge as Muse and Noel Guglielmi as Hector.

This was frenetically directed by Rob Cohen ("Dragon: The Story of Bruce Lee" '93, "Daylight" '96, "The Skulls" 2000, "xXx" '02, "Stealth" '05, "The Boy Next Door" '15) plus other films and TV. Again, this filmmaker has treaded on familiar ground before this film and post this film and he knows this type of film like the back of his hand. Sometimes it would be refreshing to see a director pull off an entirely different genre, but in the case of certain directors, Cohen being one of them, it's probably better to let sleeping dogs lie. It was written by Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist and David Ayer based a screen story by Thompson which was based on a magazine article, "Racer X" by Ken Li. These are relatively seasoned writers before and after this production and I can certainly understand why. This storyline simply moved its audience with relative ease, even though the premise was not a difficult or complex one, these guys were able to transport the audience in another world where they could escape and have fun Were there a few slow places in script? Sure, but certainly not enough to keep one not glued to their theater seat. The real star here was probably Mic Rodgers, who supervised the car stunts as stunt coordinator. They were amazing.

This is the quintessential summer flick replete with car chases, explosions, handsome guys, beautiful women, and incredibly fast cars. This film has come and (remember I said it was showing one night and one time), but I would recommend you to rent or Netflix this and play it on as large of a TV as possible and have a great ride!

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                      Rated: PG-13                                    107mins.