The Fate of the Furious

A little over a year ago I reviewed Furious 7 to coincide with the theatrical release of the spinoff film, Hobbes & Shaw. On a quick side note Hobbes & Shaw was a surprisingly bad detour for the series that I would rank right at the bottom with 2 Fast 2 Furious as the only two subpar entries from the franchise. It is safe to say I do no plan on reviewing it here. What I am reviewing today is the latest core entry in The Fast and the Furious brand in 2017’s The Fate of the Furious (trailer). Fast & Furious 9 was supposed to hit theaters earlier this summer, but the pandemic and current closure of a majority of theaters prompted Universal to push it back to April 2021. So while today’s entry will not have the honor of coinciding with the latest theatrical release like I did with my blog last year, it does have consolation prize of coinciding with the blink-and-miss-it release of the critically panned videogame, Fast and Furious: Crossroads, a couple weeks ago. I have yet to play the game, but I feel safe to say The Fate of the Furious is likely exponentially better than it.

Veteran director Gary Gray takes his first attempt at directing a F&F film and opens The Fate of the Furious off with Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) enjoying themselves in an extended honeymoon in Cuba before Vin’s cousin finds himself in trouble and Dom has to naturally race the local goon to settle the score. It is one of the best races of all the films where Dom tricks out his cousin’s lemon of a ride with a Cuban formula of NOS that propels Dom to push the car to its limits and have a thrilling finish which raises the ‘yeah, right’ factor of the F&F films to new heights, but in all the right ways.

Not all is peachy for Dom though because not long after that killer opening he meets this film’s antagonist, Cipher (Charlize Theron). Fate of the Furious quickly establishes that Cipher is no pushover villain as she forces Dom’s hand to turning on his team on a routine black ops mission in Germany where he steals an EMP for Cipher. From here the film shifts into how Cipher has her hooks into Dom and has him doing jobs for her across the globe to setup one ultimate heist in Russia to close off the film in a dazzling array of the eye-popping stunts and special effects the brand is known for.

Seeing how Dom’s team responds to his betrayal and try to stay on his toes is a fun game of cat and mouse. Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) returns to assemble the team on these unofficial black ops missions and has a new apprentice by his side going by Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood). Roman (Tyrese Gibson) has a fun friendly rivalry with Little Nobody throughout the film. This is probably the best performance Tyrese has put in throughout the series, with him disposing of several baddies with his signature flair in the last act especially standing out for him. Tej (Ludacris) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emanuel) return to display their hacking prowess. A quick line of dialogue addresses the Paul Walker dilemma by the gang respecting Brian and Mia’s choice to live their family life and not get them involved. Hobbes (The Rock) is as awesome as ever in his larger-than-life persona. One of the most entertaining scenes in the film is where Hobbes finds himself locked up with Furious 7’s villain, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). Watching the two go on a showcase prison break was a delight and a half to consume.

In a questionable twist, Hobbes ropes Shaw into working for the team to help bring down Cipher and Dom. Surprisingly the rest of the team has no problem welcoming Shaw into the team despite Shaw murdering their former beloved comrade, Han, in the Furious 7. I have a big problem with this since Shaw shows no remorse for his past and no one on the team confronts Shaw about Han’s assassination here. Shaw does play a big role in the final big Russia action scene to help assist the team, but it is quite the stretch to say it absolves him of murdering Han. Granted, there are a lot of suspend disbelief moments with any F&F film, but this is a glaring flaw that goes unaddressed in this film.

Speaking of ‘suspend disbelief’ moments, as far as the action and stunts in Fate of the Furious goes, I can safely assure that this film lives up to the high bar the series has established. There is a absurd scene involving an army of hacked smart cars that I was able to turn off my mind and roll with. Same goes for a military grade tank and submarine chase on the Russian ice. Gary Gray pulls out all the stops in that final act at the Russian base and the final half hour will fly by before you know it. I remember coming off my initial theatrical viewing of this thinking that Cipher’s ruthlessness seemed too forced and put on, but I came around on her in my second viewing. Her constant bullying over Dom to keep him doing her bidding throughout and being presented as the mastermind of all hackers makes Cipher reside in the top tier of villains for the films. It ultimately all comes together for another outstanding film for the franchise.

Like most past F&F BluRays and DVDs, there is a hearty amount of extra features on this BluRay. Gary Gray offers up a solo commentary track which offers up plenty of production facts and insight. Highlights include his love for the opening Cuban race, relating his past chemistry working with The Rock on Be Cool paying off dividends here, pulling off the ostensibly impossible feat of closing off Time’s Square and how Gray slyly snuck in a reference to his past work on Friday that went right over my head. There is a little over an hour worth of additional bonus material on here. They are split up into many smaller features, and of those I would recommend checking out Zombie Cars, Malecon Stunt Race, Streets of New York and Iceland Stunt Drops the most as they all do a masterful job at breaking down the stunt work and the logistics that made these ambitious scenes possible. I re-watched all the previous films along with a commentary track from the crew at Giant Bomb, but all their commentary tracks were planned in time to build up to the theatrical release of this film so instead of a commentary track they released a spoiler-cast analyzing the whole film and ranking all the films at the end. I re-listened to it last night and they do a thorough job dissecting their highs and lows with it. Click or press here to give it a listen.

The Fate of the Furious held up much better than I originally thought. Thinking back on it, a part of me likely felt awkward how to take in a F&F film without Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster undoubtedly played a role in my initial mixed take on the eighth film. It also helped that I came around on Charlize Theron’s performance on my second viewing too. Aside from my reservations with Deckard Shaw being fully welcomed into ‘the family’ by the end of the film, I had a riot with The Fate of the Furious and it continues the roll of outstanding entries in the series since the fifth film. Here is hoping the ninth film does not suffer any more delays and that it will hit theaters this April!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Avengers: Infinity War
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed I & II
Deck the Halls
Detroit Rock City
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Grunt: The Wrestling Movie
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Hell Comes to Frogtown
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
I Like to Hurt People
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Last Action Hero
Major League
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Man vs Snake
Marine 3-6
Merry Friggin Christmas
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Not for Resale
Pulp Fiction
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VIII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Scott Pilgrim vs the World
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Slacker
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Sully
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
The Wizard
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Furious 7

The first official spinoff of the Fast and Furious franchise hit theaters this weekend with the release of Hobbs and Shaw. It only seems fitting then with that hitting theaters to continue my trek through covering the series here with 2015’s Furious 7 (trailer). The seventh entry in the series showcased Jason Statham in the role of the unstoppable villain, Deckard Shaw. Furious 7 also infamously went down as the last film in the series to feature one of the two franchise lead-men, Paul Walker since he perished in a tragic car wreck in the midst of shooting this film. His brother took his place in several stand-in spots for the final scenes to be shot with his character. Needless to say one of the burning questions I had originally going into this at the theaters opening weekend was how were they going to handle writing him off the series? I will cross that bridge in towards the end of this entry.

Furious 7 has a new director at the helm with James Wan of Saw, Insidious and Conjuring fame. He has a killer opening shot of Deckard Shaw at the hospital bedside of his brother, Owen (Luke Evans), who barely survived the aftermath of his clash with Dom (Vin Diesel) in the last film and Deckard promising to avenge him. Another opening act shot that gelled with me was Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Dom revisiting the Race Wars rally for the first time in the series since the original film to get our obligatory drag race out of the way early where Letty easily lays waste to her opposition. I appreciated the callback to Race Wars, and was surprised to see them dig out periphery character Hector (Noel Gugliemi) from the original film to make a fun cameo too.

Just like the post-credits tag scene in Fast & Furious 6 eluded to, Furious 7 finally puts a tidy bow on the split timelines in the canon. Stick with me…..the previous three Fast films technically all took place before Tokyo Drift since Han (Sung Kang) perished in that film but the filmmakers liked him so much that they kept bringing him back. To wrap up this glaring loose end, after an exhilarating fight with Hobbs (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson), Shaw breaks into Hobbs’ computer to find the location of Han and assassinate him to get Dom’s attention. Props to Furious 7 for tracking down Lucas Black to get him back in his role as Sean Boswell for a scene with Dom wrapping up the Tokyo chapter of the series. I remember being both stoked to see Black back, and bummed to see him limited to only one scene and almost expected to see him welcomed as part of Dom’s gang. There are currently rumors he will be back in a bigger role in the upcoming ninth film in the series.

Since we still see Dom’s crew at Han’s funeral and all the succeeding events seemingly transpire in the weeks afterwards it is safe to presume this movie still is set in 2006 when Tokyo Drift initially released….that is until we see in the early part of Furious 7 Letty visiting her old grave that has a 2009 death year on it from when we thought she died in the fourth film, which should have took place before Tokyo Drift…..ah forget it.

Anyways, point being is whenever year Furious 7 transpires, it is hard to believe it was in the 2000s decade (aka ‘The Aughts’) after Dom’s crew meets up with secret government ghost agent Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell). Mr. Nobody essentially gives the government’s unofficial backing to Dom’s gang as their go to master heist crew for secret-ops missions. He also introduces the gang to all kinds of high-tech level gadgetry right that seems like it was pulled right out of the latest 007 film. I could not remember the name of Russell’s character when writing this and I cannot stand the name ‘Mr. Nobody’ the moment I looked it up for reference for this so I will instead just refer to his character as his real name Kurt Russell from here on out because Kurt Russell is portrayed as a bonafide badass in this film.

Russell helps Dom’s crew rescue kidnapped hacker, Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), who has knowledge of a ‘God’s Eye’ device which has access to all the security and cell phone cameras across the world. Of course, there are the now-obligatory ridiculous stunt scenes that result in Team Ride or Die snatching Ramsey away from the terrorists. It involves a hilarious sequence of skydiving cars and culminates with Dom escaping terrorists by intentionally flipping his car down a cliff and literally walking right out of the totaled car and brushing it off without any injury! Not even a bandage! Trust me, things get even more gloriously ludicrous from there when Ramsey tells the crew they must traverse to Abu Dhabi to procure the ‘God’s Eye.’ If you thought things were bonkers with the safe in Fast Five and the heroic tank leaps and infinite runway in the sixth movie, then props to Wan for somehow topping those stunts with a must-see to believe ‘Cars Can’t Fly’ moment in Furious 7 involving a three million dollar car and the Etihad Towers. It is easily one of the all-time ‘holy shit’ moments in big-budget blockbuster cinema history, and that is saying something!

After some more back and forth shenanigans with Shaw, everything comes to a boil in a heavy duty final act involving predator drones, car jousts, Hobbs donning a chain gun against a helicopter and an epic Dom vs Shaw street fight. This all adds up to Dom’s gang being masters at car-heisting, street races, breathtaking vehicle stunt-work and fluent in the latest and greatest top-secret government tech. 007 Car Heisters….or something like that. This is the first time I saw Furious 7 since the theaters and I forgot about how awesome the overall arc and climatic action/stunt-work/heist scenes were compared to the previous movies. It is easily in the same class with the raised stakes and budget the previous two movies established.

A lot of that amazing stunt work is chronicled in the near two hours of extra features. Flying Cars is a fascinating watch to see how skydivers literally jumped out with flying cars to get those up-close camera shots during the car skydiving sequence. Tower Jumps is also worth checking out to see how the ‘Cars Can’t Fly’ sequence was pulled off. Both are quick watches at around seven minutes each while Talking Fast is a broader all encompassing extra at just over a half hour where Wan curates his favorite moments and scenes from the film and it nicely jumps to interviews with the cast members involved in each moment and Wan provides additional insight to how he pulled off some key shots. Talking Fast suffices for the lack of a commentary track from Wan that Justin Lin spoiled me with on the last four Fast home video releases.

There are a few other smaller extras on the BluRay covering other stunt-work and fight scenes, but what surprisingly jumped out to me in this last smattering of bonus features is one covering the making of the Fast and Furious Supercharged Ride attraction at Universal Studios. I coincidentally went on that ride on vacation earlier this year and can confirm it captures the spirit of the films and spares no expense when compared to the other big budget rides at Universal Studios. Finally, there is the Wiz Khalifa music video, ‘See You Again’ that is easily identified for being the song that closed off Furious 7 with its emotional farewell scene for Paul Walker.

Yes, it is time to touch on Furious 7 sending Paul Walker off into the sunset. Wan and the rest of the filmmakers could not have done it any better. It is undoubtedly a rough scene to get through and I would be lying if I said I was not holding back any sniffles and getting dusty-eyed throughout it. Part of me thought they were going to kill off Connor, and I had no idea what the script originally called for, but the final on-screen product was the perfect way to sunset the Connor and Mia (Jordana Brewster) characters out of the picture by them going on their own to be a family. I will never forget I was at a gas station shortly after leaving a minor league hockey game with another film buff when I found out about the news and we both needed a moment to take it all in. Ironically enough, earlier that day before the hockey game I was at a pawn shop and bought the PS2 Fast and Furious game.

This was the final film in the franchise I watched along with Dan, Vinny and Alex of Giant Bomb in their Film and 40s commentary series. It made for once again another highly entertaining watch as I echoed many of their sentiments throughout. Highlights include the quote ‘That’s some Asura’s Wrath shit’ during a big stunt moment, Dan picking Alex’s brain on getting into Deftones, priceless reactions to the huge car skydiving and tower leap moments, predicting future celebrity villains, them trying to add up the Tokyo Drift plot lines like I was earlier and searching online for a replica Vin Diesel cross necklace on Amazon. Oh yeah, and I did indeed share along in the sniffles with them during the aforementioned emotional final scene.

And that is Furious 7. I apologize for repeating myself, but it seems worth repeating all I remembered going into it again was the Paul Walker farewell and I forgot how good the stuntwork and caliber of jaw-dropping moments were here especially when stacked up to prior films in the series. Again, Furious 7 stands in the same league with the big budget blockbusters that the fifth and sixth installments evolved into and I loved how it found another way to raise the stakes by introducing Kurt Russell’s character into the fray and giving them the government’s unofficial blessing as being super-hi-tech ghost agents. With the untimely death of Paul Walker and the fitting farewell scene for him to close off the film I will forever have a special place for Furious 7 in the brand’s hierarchy.

'For Paul'
Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Avengers: Infinity War
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Major League
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-6
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Fast & Furious 6

Thanks for joining me once again as I march through the Fast and Furious films in anticipation of the next release in the franchise, Hobbes & Shaw. We are not here to talk about that film coming August 9th of this year, instead we are here to revisit 2013’s Fast & Furious 6 (trailer. I vividly remember seeing this in the theater with friends and taking in yet another ridiculously over-the-top action installment of the series that Fast Five steered the direction of the brand in. I will never forget friends instantly dismissing the outrageous nature of the stunts in disbelief coming out of the theater, but upon re-watching it this week I only learned to embrace its style of unbelievable.

FF6 kicks off a few months after Fast Five where Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) gets back home in Spain just in time for Mia (Jordana Brewster) to deliver their first child. Not all is sunshine and rainbows however as they soon receive a visit from Dom (Vin Diesel) who informs them of the news he just got from special forces agent Hobbes (The Rock) that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is still alive and now running with the equivalent of a doppelganger car heist crew that left a tornado of chaos in their dust in Russia. Hobbes wants Dom to reassemble their team to take them down. Why not bring in the feds one may ask? Because Hobbes wants ‘the best’ to take down this new car gang heist and the feds simply do not stack up to the Dom’s crew! Dom is more than willing to reunite his team in the spirit of FF clichés such as ‘family’ and ‘ride or die.’ A great scene then transpires where the rest of the crew is tracked down and brought back together with Roman (Tyrese), Gisele (Gal Gadot), Han (Sung Kan) and Tej (Ludacris) all more just as eager to suit up again with Dom & Brian.

Oh yeah, since Han is still riding with the crew, that means FF6 is set before the events of 2006’s Tokyo Drift. I will give director Justin Lin credit for doing his best to avoid all shots of smartphones since they were not around in 2006. I cannot vouch for any of the luxurious cars in the film not matching with the timeline since I am not a gearhead by any means. Although the villain car gang does make use of a car hacking device that seems several years ahead of its time and more fitting in a futuristic Watchdogs-esque setting, but who am I to know. Speaking of the villain gang, FF6 does a worthy job of establishing them as formidable foes for Dom’s crew. Other than each of the lesser goons getting a quick standout action scene or two (with an awesome one being Joe Taslim showing off his The Raid chops in a killer fight with Roman & Han), there is not a lot of time devoted to establish the entire antagonist gang. The exception to this is their leader Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) who FF6 clearly gets across is constantly one step ahead of Dom’s gang. One of my favorite scenes is when Dom & Owen have a calm before the storm face-to-face ala Heat before the final act of nonstop action gets underway and after their war of words I could not wait for them to tear each other’s gang apart in a way only this franchise is capable of.

As mentioned in the previous entry, by this point in the franchise it is all about a big heist and explosive action and no longer focusing on street races. There is one nice little street race between Dom & Letty that culminates in the two having their own Lethal Weapon 3 moment, but the final hour’s worth of action is what I will mostly remember FF6 for. The final hour has two huge action scenes with a brief breather in-between them. The first scene is Dom’s gang trying their best to prevent Shaw’s crew in heisting a military convoy that leads to YEAH RIGHT RIDICULOUS STUNTS transpiring on a civilian highway with countless cars getting taken out amidst the glorious mayhem the dueling crews unleash on each other. Re-watching them again six years later still lit me up and if you are on board with the craziness of the Fast and Furious brand at this point you will likely have a similar ‘hell yeah, keep it coming’ reaction, or if you are opposed to their over-the-top style brand of stunts you will shake your head in disbelief like some friends of mine at the theater did. I completely understand both sides of the fence on this one, but as you can tell I am in the former camp and absolutely love this. The second half features the infamous ‘infinite airline runway of doom’ where the two camps wage war on a mammoth Russian Fuselage with even more ridiculous stunts and fights. On the fuselage everyone makes their last stand including a surprisingly capable pasty goon and a four person brawl between the four biggest meatheads of the series that culminates in the best headbutt in cinematic history since The Garbage Picking, Field Goal Kicking, Philadelphia Phenomenon!

If you have been keeping up with the rest of my Fast and Furious entries so far, you will know I watched this with the commentary track from the staff of giantbomb.com. Like their previous commentaries, their staff consists of a FF newbie seeing the films for the first time, a diehard fan of the franchise, and an inbetween casual fan. They all combine for memorable reactions to the outrageous stunts, surprise cameos, the aforementioned four person meathead brawl that only enhanced my re-watch of the film. The commentary highlight is one Alex Navarro’s real time mile countdown of how long the runway is in the film. After I finished my Giant Bomb commentary track viewing, I re-watched the second half of FF6 with the BluRay’s commentary from director Justin Lin. Aside from a hair too many noticeable lulls, Lin provides his usual keen insight with some key takeaways for me being Lin addressing his ambitious stunts and fearing how they ‘jumped the shark’ with Dom’s leap stunt but having validation for it in test screenings and Lin breaking down the direction they went with the eye-opening post-credits scene.

Aside from the commentary there is additionally an hour and a half of bonus features. Most of them are well done and worth taking the time for. If I had to single out a few of the many features, Take Control is a nice over-arching 20 minute look on the film from most of the primary cast and crew. The Making of FF6 is a little more thorough near half hour take diving into the plot more and how they reunited the cast again. If you are into the stunts I highly recommend checking out the quick six minute Highway Heist feature where they reveal how the crew got exclusive first dibs to a newly finished highway in the Canary Islands before it was open to the public to film the highway action scene. Finally, Hand-to-Hand Fury is an in-depth nine minute take on the excellent fight choreography featured throughout.

I recall in the weeks succeeding the release of Fast and Furious 6 that a fair amount of fans and critics proclaimed the cast and crew somehow achieved the impossible and topped their efforts in the beloved Fast Five. For the longest time I would not hear it, as I still love Fast Five a ton (as you can tell by my entry right here), but upon revisiting Fast & Furious 6 all these years later I think I have to do a 180 and give the ever-so-tiny of a nudge in favor of the sixth film as my favorite in the series. It has more exhilarating stunts and action, the best overall cast, and higher-highs with some exclamation points that feel a smidge more punctuated than the fifth film. It all comes together as a terrific ending for director Justin Lin’s fourth and final film in the series as he ties it all together with a touching callback ending to the original film’s closing. I will close with if you have not seen FF6 yet, make sure to stay past the credits for the tag as it features a bonus scene that finally brings the franchise back to the present timeline with a killer surprise twist.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Avengers: Infinity War
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-6
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Fast Five

I am having slightly better turnaround times at getting to my latest installment covering the Fast and Furious franchise with today’s film being 2011’s Fast Five (trailer). The rousing success of the fifth film served as the blueprint for all the films following it until this day. I went in with no fears that it would still hold up well nearly a decade later.

As mentioned in my entry for Fast & Furious, the films were starting to evolve from the core trilogy that were primarily about late night car tuner culture and street races and shift more towards implementing these rides in elaborate heists. Fast Five goes all in on this concept and minus a few subtle callbacks throughout the film, ditches the street race focus of the first three films entirely. Now the heists are at the forefront and became larger than life where director Justin Lin went on to state in the commentary he learned to ‘embrace the ridulous-ness’ and go all out with fantastical stunts that I recall leading to many popped eyes in my initial viewing in the theater.

Fast Five sees Dom (Vin Diesel), Bryan (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) reunite in Brazil after freeing Dom from custody at the end of the previous film. They meet up with their old pal, Vince (Matt Schulze) who we have not seen since the original film. The four of them group up for a job involving a train that has some spectacular stunts to kick things off. During the job they discover there is more than meets the eye and they encounter the antagonist of the film by the name of Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). The four decide to assemble a team to take down Reyes and claim his millions of dollars stashed away in a vault. And thus we now have the new framework for the series where ‘Team FF’ are the ultimate pros at big jobs and work together in the name of ‘FAMILY’ to take down evil-doer crime lords.

The team they assemble is a all-star roll call of supporting players from previous films including Roman (Tyrese Gibson) & Tej (Ludacris) from 2Fast 2Furious, Han (Sung Kang) from Tokyo Drift, and Gisele (Gal Gadot), Leo (Tego Calderon) & Santos (Don Omar) from Fast & Furious. To cover their bases of a gang having the prerequisite computer wiz, Tej stepped up and added pro-hacker to his resume aside from fun-party-rides guy from the second film we knew him as. They receive some unexpected assists from federal agents Hobbes (The Rock) and Elena (Elsa Pataky). They are the surviving two members of a squad of federal agents (who the Giant Bomb commentary track consistently refers to as ‘Team Wildlands’) sent from the USA to track down Dom, Bryan & Mia and haul them back to America until their squad mates met their demise from an ambush sent out from Reyes. Now with a common enemy and mutual respect between the two after an adrenaline-pumping, full-on red meat, wall-pouncing, show-stealing duel, the two alphas align in a fist-bumping moment for the ages when Hobbes & Elena help out Team FF.

Somehow, director Justin Lin managed to make this ensemble cast gel together all at once. Nearly every team member has a few pivotal scenes throughout where the spotlight is on them. I was fully invested when the team is formed by the second half and is going through the stages of setting up the ultimate end-scene safe heist. Watching them all flawlessly work together and overcome every obstacle Reyes threw at them was a ride I was thrilled to tag along in. It reminded me why I loved (some) of the Ocean films and enjoying the journey of planning everything out and trying to piece together all the little things that pay off when the heist plays out. When it comes time for Team FF to swipe Reyes’ safe from his seemingly impenetrable fortress, Fast Five did not disappoint. I recall seeing this in the theater for the first time and simultaneously thinking this is the most unrealistic way to steal a safe but also loved how brazen Lin was to simply go for it and own this scene and take you on the ultimate thrill ride unlike any other heist film before it. It was like Lin stated earlier, just roll with the balls-out nature of the film and good times will be guaranteed.

As with the previous films I have been re-watching, I watched this with the commentary track from the Giant Bomb crew. Aside from them cracking me up with their ‘Team Wildlands’ nickname, their commentary has lots of fun watch-a-long insight such as regretting bringing Coronas to the viewing party after realizing Fast Five is the first film in the series not to feature them, ironic love for Paul Walker’s acting prowess and being in constant disbelief at Ludacris’s newfound tech skills. Vinny never saw the film before so hearing his reactions to the bigger stunts was a riot. I also listened to Justin Lin’s solo commentary on the BluRay and he is a pro at mastering solo commentaries with nonstop facts about the cast, crew and filming process. Some highlights include hearing the love he got from doing overseas press tours on the fourth film was what brought him back for the fifth, pointing out the tiny additions to the extended cut and being careful on where to film in Brazil.

Aside from the commentary, there are 12 bonus features totaling 75 minutes on the BluRay. About half of them are must-see. Usually most bonuses breaking down stunt scenes I am accustomed to in a lot of action films and I get kind of tone-deaf to them, but with Fast Five’s ambitious stunts I got a lot out of the bonuses detailing how they filmed the opening train heist and closing safe heist. Hearing how they got a mini-truck inside to drive the safe around was something else. There is also a recommended extra, On Set with Justin Lin, where Lin is shown behind-the-scenes hustling for the ultimate shots of what seems like a inconsequential scene from an earlier part of the film, but to see how Lin got it all come together to get the very best out of everyone was simply awesome. I got to see some of that too in the extra Dom vs. Hobbes where they dissect that fight scene and hearing how Lin halted production for two hours to hear Vin Diesel make his case for the inclusion of ONE MOVE in that entire fight goes to show the passion the cast and crew has for the brand. Overall it is a tremendous smattering of extra features to dive into!

Fast Five is the reason why the franchise has been a mainstay in pop culture since that one hit theaters. If you have managed to elude the mega-popular brand all these years but have been pondering on giving one of them a chance, then make sure it is Fast Five. The later films are still good, over-the-top awesome heist films, but Fast Five is easily my runaway favorite of the series.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-6
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Fast & Furious

I did not mean for nearly a year and a half to pass since my last entry covering the Fast and Furious franchise. I apologize for keeping everyone waiting for today’s much anticipated blog covering the fourth film in the franchise, 2009’s Fast & Furious (trailer). I recalled seeing the initial previews for this and remembered being excited about Universal reuniting the four core original cast members, but also thought that it might have been too late because it seemed like at this point both Paul Walker and Vin Diesel’s careers were well into their decline and this was their last gasp for success. As we all know by now, F&F revitalized the franchise and transitioned the films from the underground street racing/car culture series into the blockbuster action/heist movies we embrace them as today.

As I alluded to in my Tokyo Drift review, F&F is where the timeline for the series goes sideways. Director Justin Lin stated in the commentary that even though Han was killed off in Tokyo Drift, he wanted to bring him back since he was a fun character so Lin has F&F take place before Tokyo Drift. Sure enough, Han is here, but only in the opening scene riding with Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew on their latest rig heist which involves a semi with five(!) gas tanker attachments on a stretch of highway that is well over the one kilometer they proclaim (though later films will greatly outdo this exaggeration). The tanker heist goes sideways and leads to Dom abandoning Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and retreating to Panama. After some time passes Dom finds out Letty was murdered, and he comes back to Cali and reunites with his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and FBI agent Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) to track down the Braga gang responsible for Letty’s murder.

I remember the scene introducing O’Conner chasing down a thug for information on his latest target in a high adrenaline foot chase that seemed ripped right out of a Bourne film. Apparently O’Conner has lethal Parkour abilities now that would multiply exponentially in his 2014 film, Brick Mansions. After eight years it was fun seeing O’Conner, Dom and Mia all reunite and within no time their chemistry was clicking with a plethora of callbacks to the first film. Yes, Dom still loves ‘family’ and crosses and O’Conner still loves NOS.

I mentioned in the intro F&F transitions the series from its underground street racing roots into the action/heist genre because the film is about half and half of each. There is a big street race in the middle of the film Dom & O’Conner participate in order to win an open slot in Braga. Lin stated in the commentary GPS tech was a couple years into ubiquity and wanted to different this race by implementing plenty of snazzy GPS CG effects throughout the race. Lin unapologetically went all in with the GPS effects here and while over-the-top, they enhance this race and make it stand out as one of the marquee races in the whole Fast and Furious franchise.

I recall Gal Gadot’s character, Gisele being more prominent in the later films, and completely forgot about her being a support character in F&F. She is working for the head of Braga, Campos (John Ortiz) and the film teases a relationship between Dom and her that I also completely neglected from my initial viewing. I could not help but chuckle at Lin’s comments in the commentary predicting big things coming for the future Wonder Woman.

Two big things I took away from my first viewing of this film nine years ago was that it made GPS seem like the coolest tech out there, and the intense tunnel chase scenes. There are two tunnel chase scenes in F&F, and they both paid off with memorable thrills. If you have the time make sure to check out the extra features that break down how the crew constructed their own makeshift tunnel which enabled them to pull off the insane stunts entirely with practical effects. F&F closes with O’Conner trying to get Dom’s name cleared for helping takedown Braga, only to see Dom still get carted into a bus for lockup…that is until O’Conner goes rogue and pulls up with his own crew to bust Dom off the prison transport bus in one of the best endings of the entire series. I was in disbelief on Lin’s commentary track thoughts on the ending: ‘Yeah, we left it open-ended, we’ll see what happens if folks want to revisit this.’ As box office records and many sequels would later indicate, people went on to revisit the films with aplomb.

I referenced Lin’s commentary track a few times already, and even though it is a solo commentary I highly recommend giving it a listen since it is full on nonstop factoids and anecdotes from the filming. Aside from the commentary there is another hour and a half of extra features. There is a 20-minute short film, Los Bandolerors, that sets the stage for the beginning of F&F, and while it features most of the cast and has a couple little moments referenced in the film, I would not say it is requisite viewing. There are eight extra features with most of them showcasing the cars and stunt work. The two extras I would recommend the most are Getting the Gang Back Together and Races & Chases. The former has the cast reflecting on the past films and how it felt to reunite for this film and the latter is the aforementioned extra that breaks down how the crew made the awesome GPS race and tunnel chases possible. The Pitbull music video for ‘Blanco’ is skip-worthy, but do not skip through the gag reel because it has a killer spoof at the end that left me rolling!

I should mention like the prior films, on this F&F re-watch, I experienced it with the Giant Bomb commentary track where their staff does another commendable job highlighted with Alex’s vast knowledge of the series shepherding Dan’s earnest negligence of it. I enjoyed Fast & Furious much more than I remembered. The latter films upped the ante so much more with their casting and stunts that it made me forget how this film got the movies going in that direction. If you have somehow not seen this installment in the films yet, go out of your way now to correct that wrong!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs
3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-5
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Welcome back to my latest entry going through the Fast and Furious franchise. Today I am covering the third movie in the series, 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (trailer). If you are going through my blog archives and am curious why there is no entry for 2Fast, 2Furious, that is because as I stated in my blog for the first film that is the only film in the brand that I loathe and do not own so I am going to pretend it does not exist.

-I always considered Tokyo Drift a side story in the F&F universe since Vin Diesel & Paul Walker’s characters take a backseat and this film focuses on one Sean Boswell (Lucas Black). After getting in a nasty wreck in a street race gone awry with high school rival Clay (Zachery Ty Bryan), Sean is sent packing overseas to live with his father (Brian Goodman) in Tokyo. Even in the Far East Sean cannot escape the thrills of the underground street racing scene after getting introduced to it by new friend, Twinkie (Shad Moss aka Lil Bow Wow).

-I ended up watching Tokyo Drift twice. The first time I watched it with the Giant Bomb staff commentary like I did with the first film, and the second time with director commentary from Justin Lin (Tokyo Drift marks the first of four straight F&F films that Lin directed). The Giant Bomb crew once again was a riot to listen to especially since GB head honcho Jeff Gertsmann flew nationwide to join up with the East Coast office’s crew to specifically watch this film with these guys. Jeff has a lot of awesome stories about relating to this film with his rambunctious street racing tales growing up and lays down some knowledge on drift culture and goes in depth on some car industry lingo when appropriate. Lin also had a lot of nonstop insight throughout and had a lot of love for the cast and I got a kick of his memory of car enthusiasts riding him on swapping out the engine of a Dodge Charger in order to make it drift-worthy. I also appreciated Lin explaining what it took to pull off and how grateful he was to get a certain cameo at the end of the film.

-The opening race scene where Sean and Clay race is awesomely cheesy where the two demolish a new expansion of residential areas under developmen. There is silly a BluRay GPS extra feature where each driver’s location is shown on an overlay map on the screen. I nodded along enthusiastically following the dots with intense driving action playing out to Kid Rock’s “Bawitaba” in the background.

-Tokyo Drift is the final movie in the franchise to have street racing be the primary focus of the film. Tokyo Drift’s hook on the racing is by introducing drifting to the street races. I recall being surprised at how the film made it seem like it was this revolutionary technique that was only applicable in Japan, but that was probably because I played too many driving videogames that had a drift feature such as various Need for Speed and Burnout games by 2006. Regardless, I loved how the film embraced drifting here by introducing the antagonist street racer of the film, DK aka Drift King (Brian Tee). He smokes Sean in an early race in the film as Sean is flummoxed at this radical new car technique, but luckily Han (Sung Kang) takes him under his wing and shows him the ropes at making him a master drifter in a well-produced montage.

-Spoilers ahead, skip this paragraph if you have not seen Tokyo Drift. Yes, Han makes his F&F debut in this film, and even though he bites the dust to set up the final act, Justin Lin loved the character so much that he brought him back for the next three films. When asked about this in interviews, Lin simply stated that F&F 4-6 all take place before Tokyo Drift. Sure, why not. That is fine, because Han is an awesome character and Kang nails his laid back role and even has a couple throwaway loose references in Tokyo Drift on how he use to ride with ‘The Family’ that formed in the following films so it all makes sense anyways. If you are new to the series and absolutely want to watch the films in the proper canonical order then the correct way to do so is starting off with the first two movies, then skip to four through six, but skip the post-credit scene at the end of six, then watch Tokyo Drift and then the F&F6 post-credit scene and continue on to seven and eight. If you can follow that, then you will be set and the timelines will all fall into place….I think.

-The two best scenes in the film are when Sean and Han have a serious life moment with rooftop soccer in the background and the final mountain-top race showdown between DK and Sean. It is appropriately ridiculous and filled with countless ‘yeah right’ drifts and stunts. This race went out of its way to show how advanced Japan cell phone tech was in 2006 by being able to live stream and broadcast the race with the latest flip-phones available at the time. Also, I hope you made the connection by now that F&F 4-6 all take place a couple years before the introductions of smart phones, so even though they are ubiquitous in those films, just think of them as alternate model flip-phones and avoid thinking twice about it. The race was the ultimate thrill ride and a fitting end to a surprisingly enjoyable film that did not prominently feature any of the cast from the first pair of films.

-There is a significant amount of extras on the BluRay, but unless you are seriously into car culture and drifting then you can easily skip at least half the extras. If you are a big gearhead, you will absolutely eat up Drift: Sideways Craze a one hour look at the pro drift racing scene and a few other shorter extras on drift culture. If I were to recommend just two of the 11 extra features (totaling around two and a half hours!), then check out Han’s Last Ride and Tricked Out to Drift. Those two extras break down the gang car chase scene and how the filmmakers modded the Dodge Charger in the film to make it drift-worthy. There is also a feature-length ‘Picture-in-Picture’ BluRay exclusive extra that combines all the extras and constantly switches between them all when appropriate throughout the film so that could be a better way to take in all the extra features, but I would rather suggest checking out the director commentary from Justin Lin instead.

-I still recall regretting going to the theater when initially seeing The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and thinking it was going to be a complete waste with none of the noteworthy cast in it. I was glad to be proven wrong. Tokyo Drift is far from the best film in the series, but I would still give it a strong recommendation because it is a fitting swan song for races and driving being at the forefront of the movies before the series transitioned into the over-the-top-yet-amazing-what-will-they-do-next CG experiences that we know them as today.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Marine 3 & 4
Mortal Kombat
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past