Review of Fast & Furious (2009) by Chads. — 02 Apr 2009

Oh, great. Not only is Dominic Toretto(Vin Diesel) fast and furious, now he's smart, too. At a crash site, the fugitive of the law recreates a potential crime scene with all the authority of Steven Seagal collecting water samples for the Environmental Protection Agency in Felix Enriquez Alcala's "Fire Down Below".

Dominic studies the tread marks, digs into the broken gravel with his index finger, and he knows. He knows! It's-s-s...mur-r-r-der... When Dominic isn't busy being smart, or haunted by the ramifications of his investigative detective work, he kills the pain by doing what he does best, driving fast cars with a furious essentiality.

In an organized race through urban roadways jammed with other cars, "Fast and Furious" is at its most ridiculous when Dominic and the other "Fast and the Furious" alumnist Brian O'Conner(Paul Walker), a cop, no less, weave in and out of traffic at high speeds with two more racers, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there's people behind those wheels.

This car race scene has such a video game mentality, it exists outside of the film, superceding your garden variety spectacles in other action films, because the good guys(Dominic and Brian) never acknowledge the potential loss of life that ensues after a collision.

During the race, they stop being people. They're ciphers in a video game. Quite pointedly, we never see the P.O.V. of the innocent motorists as the racers whizz pass their windows. We're not supposed to, since Dominic and Brian drive as if the other vehicles are automatic machines.