Review: Fast & Furious (and the whole series in general)

I admit that I was really excited to watch this movie. On my computer.

When I heard that another Fast and Furious movie, with the original cast, was coming out, I almost peed my pants.

So they came out in this order:

-The Fast and the Furious, directed by Rob Cohen (xXx, Stealth,...)

-2 Fast 2 Furious, directed by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Four Brothers,...)

-The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift, directed by Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow,...)

-Fast & Furious, directed by Justin Lin (Movie poster at the very top)

In my personal opinion, both 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift never happened. Neither were adequate sequels to The Fast and The Furious. A lot of people actually liked Tokyo Drift.

I don't know why. Was it the cars? Was it the girl? Was it the "drifting?" Or was it cause Brad Taylor from Home Improvement (Zachery Ty Bryan) was in it? I don't know. I can't figure out why people like Tokyo Drift so much.

I don't even remember what 2 Fast 2 Furious was about. All I remember is Paul Walker's car getting shot at by the FBI with some weird futuristic power draining gun, and then monster trucks coming out of a warehouse followed by a bunch of souped up rice burners. Oh yea, and Jin...

I'd also like to forget that Eva Mendes was ever in that movie.

After careful "analysis" I've come to realize that my love for the original, The Fast and The Furious, is primarily based off of hilarious quotes. Can you recall any lines from 2 Fast 2 Furious or Tokyo Drift? Actually I do remember a line from Tokyo Drift. When Lucus Black says, "I ain't no gaijin" with that ridiculous hillbilly accent. "Gaijin" is Japanese for foreigner.

So he says in the movie, "I ain't no foreigner." If you haven't seen Tokyo Drift, the majority of the movie takes place in TOKYO, JAPAN. Yes, he is a foreigner. I don't know why they threw that line in there...

The newest installment of The Fast and Furious series, cleverly (not really) titled, Fast & Furious, is in between TERRIBLE and AWESOME. But definitely more towards terrible than awesome.

I'm glad that the original gang got back together. Dom, Letty, Mia, and Brian. These guys are always getting into crazy shenanigans! They definitely got props for going with the O.G. gang.

Basically this movie takes place in between the first movie and Tokyo Drift. We know this because Han (who dies in Tokyo Drift) is in it.

You can definitely tell that Fast & Furious (from now on called F&F), had a bigger budget.

But there were still a number of things that I had a problem with. Each movie has at least one race scene. In one of the race scenes in F&F, they all use GPS systems. But for some reason, half of the race was shown in the perspective of the GPS. These GPS systems aren't like the ones we are used to seeing. They were in 3D, and had graphical representation of the other racers on the screen. Totally stupid.

Another thing that bothered me was that F&F stopped a trend. If you recall in The Fast and The Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Tokyo Drift, there was a rapper in the movie.

Ja Rule

Ludacris

(Lil') Bow Wow

THERE WAS NO RAPPER IN F&F! Why break the trend? Why? I'm sure it would have helped with ticket sales too. Not that they really needed the help. But why mess with "tradition?"

Like I said before, the movie was OK. There weren't any hilarious/powerful quotes like in The Fast and The Furious. They used cool looking cars. I think. I don't know too much about cars. I know what a decent car is, but I couldn't tell you why a Honda Accord is better than a Toyota Camry, or vice versa.

Overall, I wasn't that impressed with F&F. I had really high expectations. Especially because of the cast. I was expecting some AWESOME lines. I won't even bother typing out the quotes here because they just aren't as awesome when you read them.

I was expecting epic scenes. Something to surpass one of the most iconic scenes of our generation:

(Rick Yune as Johnny Tran in The Fast and The Furious)

I know most of you know what happens after this picture...ONLY THE BEST SCENE IN THE MOVIE. (HINT: "TORRETO! SWAT, CAME INTO MY HOUSE...")

Don't get me wrong. I still think F&F is the only true sequel to the first movie.

But nothing can beat the original:

My final verdict is: 2.75 Pandas

**Which is pretty good since it's a scale from 1 to 5.

I'm being a little more forgiving for F&F though, simply because it's the only REAL sequel to one of the greatest movies of all time. And when I say "greatest movies of all time," I mean that it was so bad, that it was amazing. Unlike Dragonball Evolution. Which was so bad, I wanted to forget my childhood.