friday
april 3 2009
3
Not too fast, but sometimes furious
“
Fast and Furious”has all the elements one would expectfrom a movie about street racing and drug dealers—lots ofgorgeous cars,gorgeous women,heart-racingchases,gratuitous lesbianism,a “we’re not so different,youand I”relationship between good badass and bad badass andmany,many explosions.The film begins in the DominicanRepublic,where the first ofthese explosions takes place asfamiliar racer Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his girlfriendLetty (Michelle Rodriguez) attempt to hijack a gasolinetanker-truck.The story quickly shifts to L.A.,where street-racing,dou-ble-crossing undercover cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) isworking on infiltrating the heroin trafficking cartel ofmyste-rious drug-dealer Braga through the organization’s use of import-racers to transport the product.Meanwhile,Toretto’sgasoline heist stirs up too much heat for the daredevil tostand,forcing him to flee the Domincan Republic and partways with Letty.Toretto eventually ends up in L.A.too,whereit turns out Letty has been murdered by the same peopleO’Conner is investigating.Toretto quickly gets back into hisold racing contacts looking for leads on Letty’s murderer,butapparently things have changed in the time he’s been away,and as a grease monkey reminds him,“this ain’t [his] sceneanymore,dawg.”Soon,he and O’Conner are back racingtogether for a spot on Braga’s drug-drivingteam,who move heroin through the desertalong the Mexico/U.S.border through a sys-tem oftunnels constructed specifically tosomehow to evade the Feds.“Fast and Furious”is at its best when thecars are racing in intense sequences ofspeedand stunt.Diesel and Walker race the police,the drug dealers and even each other,in one of the movie’s best scenes.The racing and revvingis truly entertaining and embody entertainmentin the gripping and most basic sense oftheword.The trouble is,when the cars aren’t mov-ing,nothing else is.When Diesel and Walker arenot sitting in their driver’s seats,the film slows toa diorama-still pace.Many ofthe film’s non-rac-ing scenes indeed seem to have been calculated in just this way—as frozen tableaus,rather than asmoving pictures.The action in “Fast and Furious”separatesitselfinto dialogue and motion,wooden figures and expres-sive machines:only when the cars are speeding and swervingdoes the film move forward inany meaningful way for the audi-ence and for the spectator.Some ofDiesel’s one-linerswould be effective,funny orpowerful ifthey hadn’t beendelivered in such a granite mon-otone.But despite the occasionalmoments ofemotion or ofsteely,badass ballsiness in the script,Diesel and Walker deliver theselines haltingly and ineffectively.The two are no more,in mostscenes,than the cardboardcutouts that promoted the filmin theatre lobbies.The cars arethe film’s true actors;their crash-es,howling engines and smokingtires are far more expressive thanDiesel’s pudgy stoicism.“Fastand Furious”is designed toentertain,and the plot and thedialogue are really only presentas necessary filler betweenraces and chases—the chas-sis to hold the film’s figura-tive “ten-second car”togeth-er.That’s not to say themovie doesn’t aim forgrand moments—someparts of“Fast andFurious”aspire to a long-lasting literary relevance—doubtlessly the writ-ers’attempt to appeal toa deeper subject matterthan revving engines andcrunching sheet-metal.In a Shakespearian turntoward the end ofthe film,Toretto stands over Bragawith an immense shotgun as the drug dealer prays at the altarofhis church.“You’re not saved”is the movie’s stand-in for“That would be scanned.”But Vin Diesel doesn’t have tostruggle with consequences or with indecision—he has thegift ofbeing able to “do the right thing.”Diesel’s hulking,gruffmagnanimity has no complexity and moral quandary (for all the film’s claims ofgood guy/bad guy ambiguity) butis instead stone fixity and basso boldness.As for Diesel’smaintenance ofhis marginally declining body,it’s just a hairpast its action-hero youth.Still,“Fast and Furious”has its bright spots.The openingscene is rousing and exciting,as are all ofthe actionsequences,and John Ortiz throws in a great performance asBraga’s second-hand man,Campos.And the cars—gleam-ing,snorting,chromed—look gorgeous and alluring.Themovie thrives on bare skin and bare sheet-metal,taught andmolded to form,and what more can we really ask for as wecrunch our popcorn?
— sam COGGESHALLcontact sam: samuelc1@stanford.edu
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Fas t & Fur ious
PG-13Ac t ion
Brian O'Connor and Dominic Tore t to wor k wi t h t he Fed to bring do wn a heroin im por ter.
MOViE REViEW
photos courtesy entertainmentwallpaper.com
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