![]() ![]() "Ĭohen developed The Fast and the Furious with Neal H. But instead of horses, we've got horsepower. "Our film deals with some of the most important themes of classic westerns - loyalty, betrayal, freedom. "What we're doing with The Fast and the Furious, in a sense, is taking the western and re-creating it in a contemporary urban milieu," Cohen continued. And you never forget that the car gave you that freedom." And then at 16, you finally get your license. There's a point in life when you're totally dependent on your parents to move around. "The car is a symbol of freedom and mobility. "There's been so much written and spoken about the place of the automobile in the development of American culture," Cohen observed. In the new parlance, they are "rice rockets," alluding to their Asian roots - sub-compact imports mostly from Japan, occasionally from Germany, which are reassembled and souped up with artistic precision by devoted owners, who spend tens of thousands of dollars customizing the engines and detailing the bodies before taking them to the streets for midnight competitions that are sometimes outside the boundaries of the law. "Ī character-driven action movie, Fast and the Furious, the (2001) puts audiences in the drivers' seats of cars that look both familiar and completely extraordinary. to the entire world via magazines, websites, slang and the innate human desire to test the limits. "It's a hobby and a lifestyle, dazzlingly multi-cultural, which has stretched from L.A. It's a world unto itself with rituals, language, rites of passage, heroes, villains and intense, gear-grinding drama," said Cohen, who witnessed the power and allure of this unique subculture at several late-night races on the industrial outskirts of Los Angeles. There’s also an enormously convoluted trip into Mexico, which seems to take place only to set up the film’s climactic (and claustrophobic) underground tunnel chase.Rob Cohen, one of today's most versatile and adventurous directors - Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, HBO's Rat Pack, The (1998), Skulls, The (2000), Dragonheart (1996), Daylight (1996) - digs in and tells a story like it is, and the import car street racing scene offered a story he couldn't resist. more dangerous to drive on than they already are. Their strategy leads them into a series of ridiculously illegal races, which make the streets of L.A. This time, their goal is to take down a drug kingpin who’s behind a murder. He ends up reluctantly re-teaming with former undercover cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), who infiltrated Dom’s gang and dated his sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), in part one. What’s the movie about, you ask? Well, not that it matters, but Diesel’s fugitive ex-con Dom Toretto is back in Los Angeles and out for revenge. And the fact that it’s so repetitive only magnifies how little this latest installment has to offer. Snarling bad guys, women who pout beautifully and, of course, a wide array of brightly hued, wildly souped-up cars - but not an ounce of creativity or grace. ![]() (The opening, in which our rebellious heroes attempt to steal gas from a speeding tanker truck, is admittedly a doozy.) But you’ve seen a lot of these sorts of stunts in the previous movies - and heard the same kind of cheesy dialogue - so it’s strange to witness how seriously “Fast & Furious” takes itself, like it’s reinventing the 19-inch wheel or something. Justin Lin, who also directed part three, 2006’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” piles on the mind-bogglingly elaborate chase scenes and set pieces. It also seems to function outside of logic, cohesive plot structure and the laws of gravity, but hey - this being the fourth film in the street-racing series, such niceties have long since been tossed out the window and run over repeatedly. That’s pretty much all there is to “Fast & Furious,” essentially a remake of the 2001 hit “The Fast and the Furious” with the same cast, except it seems to exist in some parallel universe where the word “the” no longer exists. ![]()
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