The pReview Re-viewing
Re-Watching of..
The Fast and the Furious!
(all of them)
(warning: This reeks with spoilers from Fast One through Five! Other smells may include gasoline and cursing!)
by Jeff Finck
written: 5/15/2013
Booyah! I can guarantee that no one on Earth is more excited for Fast & Furious 6 than I am! When last we left off in this tale of rapid aggression, all hell had broken loose and.. Wait, wait. Actually, we should probably start at the beginning. The year was 1769, and Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot had just built the first incarnation of the modern automobile. Cugnot had, in fact, cranked out a steam-powered tricycle. It is not known whether or not he raced the fuck out of it..
The Fast and the Furious
Sorry, I may have gone back too far. Let's just stick with the movies, I guess. In The Fast and The Furious (note the double dose of the word "The"), Paul Walker plays Keanu Reeves, who is under orders from Buffalo Bill and, perpetual authority figure, Thom Barry to infiltrate a tight-knit gang of suspected electronics thieves and find out their level of guilt using street racing.. Somehow. It turns out that the gang (full of Spice Girls-like diversity: Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto, Michelle Rodriguez as Letty, Jordana Brewster as Mia, Matt Schulze as Vince, Johnny Strong as Leon, and Chad Lindberg as Jesse) actually *is* at Guilt Level Totally, but Keanu Reeves is already in too deep, falls in love with Dom's sister and allows Dom to escape. (Side note: Paul Walker actually plays Brian O'Conner.. NOT Keanu Reeves.)
2 Fast 2 Furious
In the follow-up.. Disgraced officer Brian O'Conner (played again by Paul "Windtalker" Walker) must atone for his.. Uhmm.. Disgrace.. Of letting Vin Diesel go in the last movie by aiding in the arrest and downfall of suspected guy who let Vin Diesel escape in a different movie, Carter Verone. Being, literally, the only person who could perform such a feat (apparently), O'Conner demands to have his former best friend-turned-ex con, Roman Pearce (played by the forever hungry Tyrese Gibson), get in on the action. Together, with the help of Monica Fuentes (another agent in too deep played by Eva Mendes) they nab the bad guy, kick people in the teeth, and drive doubly fast and doubly furious on into the sunset!
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
In the third installment, we drift away to mysterious Tokyo. Not much is known about Tokyo by the start of the film, but legend has it that it's populated solely by incredibly fast cars. Like, *really* fast cars. The series abandons O'Conner for a duo of knuckleheads called Sean and Han. Sean is played by Lucas Black (Sling Blade's best friend), and Han (full name: Han Seoul-Oh.. Seriously) is played by the always hungrier than Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang. Sean ends up in Tokyo because he ruins Brad "The Toolman Taylor's Son" Taylor's day and face-- and girlfriend-- with illegal street racing and is threatened with jail time if he doesn't go and live with his dad who is in the Navy and lives in Japan and who lives in a tiny house and it sucks and so Sean gets involved with illegal street racing again to not be bored out of his American balls but soon finds himself in over his head with the Yakuza because of an attractive girl. :deep breath: So! Sean hooks up with Han (and a not-so-Lil Bow Wow) to learn how to drift race so that he can steal hottie, Neela (Nathalie Kelley), away from the Drift King.. Affectionately known to those who fear him, as DK. And then he does.
Fast & Furious
In The Fast and the Furious part Eye Vee, we learn that we can't be bothered with the whole number scheme or extraneous words.. So we just call it Fast & Furious. We also learn that since the events of 2 Fast, Brian O'Conner (Paul "Walkin' on Sunshine" Walker) has joined the FBI and is in hot pursuit of some asshole drug kingpin called Braga (John Ortiz). Braga organizes drivers to make drug runs from Mexico into the U.S. and then murders the drivers.. Because, remember, he's an asshole. One of these murdered drivers, as it turns out, is Letty (Michelle Rodriguez)! (For the uninitiated, Letty was Dom's GFF and gang member from the first movie.) A dual investigation begins with Brian on one side of the law and Dom (Vincent Edward Diesel the 3rd) on the other. The two eventually must work together to bring Braga to justice. Literally everything in this is explosive...ly toned down compared to the previous installments. Like an episode of CSI, except about 147% less good one-liners.
Fast Five
After undergoing several anger management meetings and becoming obsessed with numbering things, Fast Five brings us to our thrilling.. Uhmm.. Continuation. Everyone is back together again! For the first time! And in some cases, for the second time! At the end of Fast & Furious, Dom was on his way to jail, while Brian and Mia raced along to an inevitable prison bus-break. Now on the run, everyone makes for Brazil and drinks and bathes near nude women until a new douchebag trying to fuck everyone's lives up, Hernan Reyes (Joaquim "Bucho" de Almeaida) shows up and tries to have the gang mythbusted for killing DEA agents. This, of course, causes the king of the Diplomatic Security Service, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne "Les Roq" Johnson), to pursue. Not having any of that framing bullshit, Dom (Vin "Deezy" Diesel), Brian (Paul "Walk it Out" Walker), Mia (Jordana Brewster), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), Vince (Matt Schulze), Han Solo (Sung Kang), and Gisele (Gal Gadot) all team up to drive a massive-fuck bank vault all around bejesus and back. And that's about it, actually. In the end, the they heist the money, kill the bad guy, and then Hobbs takes a page out of Brian O'Conner's handbook and lets the team escape. But then shit gets real when, as it turns out, Letty comes back from the dead!
Now that we're all caught up, tune in on Monday when I reveal the exciting conclusion (slash) not conclusion at all, by posting my full re-viewing of Fast & Furious 6's trailer! YEAH!