This is the motto of all of the characters within the movie, “Fast and Furious,” in the fourth installment of the street racing franchise that sought to go back to the roots. And…it’s not bad. It probably isn’t the movie that fans of the series really wanted, but overall, it’s not bad. At its best it is a fast paced chase film. At its most mediocre it attempts to get Vin Diesel to appear emotional. At its worst it tries to get big, fast paced shots, loaded up with as much computer graphics as possible.
The storyline is simple and bad, but a bad story is probably what was expected. The movie actually tells two tales. The first is the return of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), for the purpose of revenge. The second tale follows Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), an agent of the FBI, as he’s tracking a mysterious drug lord.
This is where everything gets silly. This mysterious drug lord happens to be smuggling drugs across the border through the use of modified imported street racers through extremely small tunnels beneath a mountain, in order to dodge heat sensors and satellites positioned by the border patrol.
The big draw that the series had over the years was the cars. Well, they are back. There are vintage cars and modified imports alike and, in usual “Fast and Furious” style, they all get either blown up or torn apart in some horrible accident or another. As usual, every time a group of street racers gets together, they’re always followed around by an incredibly large group of extremely skinny women who hate clothing and wouldn’t mind making out with each other to pass time. Unfortunately, both the cars and the girls have plenty of fake padded onto their assets.
For a movie about street racing, it’s a bit embarrassing on the amount of computer generated graphics spread throughout the car chases. This seems to be going against the entire point of the initial advertising for the movie, that the producers are pushing this new film to be a “new engine, old parts.” The majority of the older stunts in the first three films weren’t done with computer effects. The big train crash at the end of the first film wasn’t filmed in a studio. It also wasn’t rendered after the movie was shot.
Perhaps being considered not bad is the best compliment a movie like “Fast and Furious” could have hoped for. It’s the fourth part of a series that had been steadily declining in popularity, especially with the spin-off of “Tokyo Drift.” If you liked the originals, I suggest watching the new one. If you just like action movies in general, wait for the DVD.