Review of Fast & Furious (2009) by Luke S — 25 Feb 2012

This fourth installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise brings the entire original cast back together, which is awesome. To begin the movie Dom Toretto is running vehicle based heists in the Dominican Republic, this time stealing the fuel off tanker trucks while they are still in the process of rolling down the highways! However, he eventually brings too much heat down on himself and in an effort to keep Letty safe he leaves the D.

R. in the middle of the night, heading for Panama City. Months later Toretto returns to Los Angeles, after being informed by his sister Mia that Letty was murdered. Little does Toretto realize that the reason Letty was murdered is because she got tangled up with a Mexican drug runner named Arturo Braga.

She had called Brian O'Conner, Toretto's nemesis, and arranged for a deal that would see Toretto's record wiped and allow him to come home safely, if and only if she could help the LAPD bust Braga.

But things didn't go smoothly and Letty paid the price . . . with her life. Needless to say when Toretto returns to the states he is hell-bent on revenge!! He does some sleuthing and eventually figures out that it was through Braga that Letty somehow perished.

Toretto then auditions to be a driver for Braga and to his surprise, so does O'Conner, attempting to work the inside angle in bringing Braga down. After some initial fireworks between the two, Toretto and O'Conner soon find themselves working together to take down a mutual target, and it's a mission that O'Conner may never be the same after.

To me this was another home run for The Fast and the Furious crew, all of these movies have had great stories so far and are chock full of action, this chapter was no exception!! I love how Toretto and O'Conner come together in the end and it appears as though the franchise is going to head in a bit of a different direction with their teaming.

I also liked how a main character like Letty was killed off, not that I liked that she was the one who died, I just appreciated how it gave the main characters a bit of accountability and a reality check.

One of my favourite parts in this film, even though it was just a brief cameo, was how they tied Han's character in to the Tokyo Drift movie which was filmed before this one, but in the Fast and the Furious timeline actually takes place after it.

Keep 'em coming!!