For a long time, I regarded the Fast & Furious franchise as beneath me. The movies appeared to be nothing more than a series of vapid car commercials and, not being much of a car guy, there was really no appeal. But during the pandemic, I got pressured into watching the first one and found myself enjoying it. Before I knew it, I’d watched every installment and couldn’t wait for the next one.
Including the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff movie, there have been 11 Fast & Furious films to date, and a 12th and final one is on the way. While all of them have their moments, the one that came out 15 years ago, on April 29, 2011, still remains the best for the way it repositioned the franchise, the way it used all the best characters (including Paul Walker), and the way its largely practical effects really take you along for the ride.
Before Fast Five, the Fast & Furious movies were all about street racing. Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto was an illegal street racer and the other characters were his friends, family, and rivals. Paul Walker began as an LAPD officer who’d gone undercover to infiltrate the illegal streetracing scene. But then Walker’s character, Brian O’Conner, realized this street racing thing was pretty cool, and he fell in love with Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster). So he becomes a street racer himself. (Brian later becomes an FBI agent, then goes bad again. Fast Five picks up after that second time.)
Fast Five was the first movie in the franchise not to focus on street racing. Instead, it’s a heist where Dominic and Brian, along with a full crew, plot to steal $100 million from a corrupt businessman so that they can start new lives. Meanwhile, as they’re hiding out in Rio de Janeiro (which is where most of the movie takes place), Dom, Brian, Mia and the others are being pursued by American DSS Agents for the murder of some DEA agents (which they were framed for by the businessman they’re plotting to steal from).
Before the big heist takes place, those DSS agents, lead by Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), capture Dom, Brian and a couple of other crew members. Then, Hobbs’ team is attacked by the businessman and Hobbs’ team dies, making Hobbs realize Dom and Brian (who saved him) are good dudes. He even helps them with the big heist, which famously involves two Dodge Chargers, driven by Dom and Brian, tethered to a giant bank vault being dragged through the streets of Rio. In the end, they essentially get away with it, becoming very rich fugitives.
What really makes this movie work is the fact that it’s a fairly simple heist story. White some of what I described above may seem convoluted, the plot is basically a bunch of outlaws plotting to steal money from a bad guy, making it easy to root for them.
In future movies, Dom’s team is repositioned as an elite spy team, called upon by the US government whenever a mission requires for a bunch of guys who can drive really fast. The future movies work and they’re still more exciting than the street racing stories, but after Fast Five the movies feel a bit more like Mission: Impossible. Fast Five finds the perfect balance where they’re still outlaw racers, but they happen to plan a heist because they hate this rich dude.
The Fast & Furious films have a lot of great characters. Dominic is a great lead and there are lots of fun characters in the crew that come and go in various films. Of course, one of the best characters is Walker’s Brian O’Connor. This is not only because Walker was charming in the role, but because Brian’s friendship with Dominic was the key relationship that shaped the series. That brotherhood gets cemented in Fast Five. It’s the first time they’re both on the same side the whole time, and it’s the one where Mia is revealed to be pregnant, making Dom and Brian actually family.
We get to see more of their friendship in the 6th and 7th movies, but with Walker’s death partway through Furious 7, some clunky editing was needed to keep him in the film (it’s done very well, but you can still feel how it was reworked mid-film). After that point, Brian is still alive in the Fast & Furious universe, but he’s decided to settle down with Mia and stays offscreen for the future installments. While the 8th, 9th and 10th movies that followed are all enjoyable, someone’s clearly missing.
The reason why people watch these movies is the action, and Fast Five has all the other films in the franchise beat. That vault heist, which was filmed in Puerto Rico doubling for Rio, involved lots of real-world destruction and car-smashing. While CG was used for some of it, a lot of the vault stuff was done with a drivable vault which smashed into all kinds of things.
After this film, as the crew got into more of the superspy stuff, the set pieces tended to transcend reality a good deal more. With that came even more reliance on CGI. Perhaps the most notorious example of this is the scene in F9 where a couple of characters essentially drive a car into space.
From what we know about the upcoming final film, Fast Forever, I’m willing to bet Fast Five stays the best movie. Recently, Vin Diesel laid out his three big demands for the final film, saying that it should return to Los Angeles, it should return to street racing, and it should involve the reunion of Dom and Brian. While I’m fine with going back to LA, the street racing thing kind of got old by the fourth film, which is why the movies needed to pivot in the first place. And, while Furious 7 managed to convincingly revive Paul Walker with the actors brothers as stand-ins and some CGI face replacement, I do not want to see him resurrected for another time as that kind of thing often feels gross and disrespectful. Worse, it would undermine the truly poetic work done in the seventh film to give Brian a proper sendoff.
With all due respect to Vin Diesel, I want a movie that follows the lessons from the best film in the franchise, Fast Five and the big lessons from that movie are that practical effects are way better than computer generated ones and that street racing is, well, kinda lame.
