Fast & Furious

When I read reviews of the The Fast & The Furious franchise, and then watch the films myself, I'm always struck by how completely the reviewers have missed the point.

Okay, so The Fast And The Furious was nothing but Point Break with Vin Deisel instead of Patrick Swazie and Tokyo Drift was alternately awful and extremely racist BUT 2 Fast 2 Furious was a good film. It wasn't great but it was a silly action film. It was a B movie, like War, Cradle 2 The Grave, Eagle Eye etc. etc. etc.

Fast & Furious continues in this vein. It's not Shakespere, it's fun. It's not entirely a car film, either. In fact, I've seen better car chases in several films but the acting is solid, the plot is above average for a film of this type and the number of times CGI is over used is minimal.

There's not really much more to say about it - it's a good, solid film. The reviewers say that it uses its strongest weapon first and then just trails off.

Now, this may or may not be true. I don't think it is but I can see how people would think that. The opening sequence is very, very good. Up until some CGI nonsense. However, it doesn't slip into X-Men 2 territory, where everything after the opening sequence is a pale imitation of those first few minutes. Fast & Furious mixes it up. There are interesting character dynamics, a fun mystery to unfurl and Jill from Chuck pops up a few times.

So yeah. If you were going to go and see Fast & Furious, expecting some B-Movie fun but were put off by the reviews... just go. Reviewers have always had problems identifying the good B-Movies from the bad ones. This is one of the good ones. Not great, but good.