Movie Review – Fast & Furious (2009)

Today we’re taking a look at Fast & Furious, a 2009 action film that’s the fourth film in The Fast and the Furious franchise.

Technically, Fast & Furious is the third film in the series as it takes place between the events in 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.  Don’t worry though if you haven’t seen 2 Fast 2 Furious.  Virtually nothing in that movie connects it with Fast & Furious.  This movie is really the first true sequel to the original film, The Fast and the Furious.

Anyway . . . Fast & Furious brings back the main characters from the first movie.  The movie’s plot revolves around the death of Letty and how Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Conner catch the guy responsible and get their revenge.

Directed by Justin Lin, Fast & Furious stars Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto, and Paul Walker as Brian O’Conner.  Supporting them in the film are Michelle Rodriguez as Leticia “Letty” Ortiz and Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto.

Fast & Furious begins in the Dominican Republic and takes place several years after the events in the first film.

Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew of hijackers, consisting of Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Leo Tego (Tego Calderon), Rico Santos (Don Omar), Cara Mirtha (Mirtha Michelle) and Han (Sung Kang), are after fuel tankers.  According to Letty, the fuel itself is worth more than gold in a country like that one.

This particular day, Dominic and his gang are after a super tanker truck consisting of several attached fuel tankers.  Letty secretly climbs onto the tanker trucks and helps attach them to the gang’s two tow trucks.  They run into trouble when the driver of the fuel truck spots Letty, and he makes evasive driving maneuvers.  When the truck goes too fast and approaches a cliff, the driver of the truck jumps out and escapes.  Letty jumps onto Dominic’s car, and the two of them narrowly avoid being crushed by one of the rolling tanker cars.

After the hijacking, Dominic suspects that the police are on their trail, and it won’t be long before he’s caught.  That’s going to be a violent confrontation that Dominic wants to avoid, especially if Letty is around.  Han splits from the gang and suggests that he’ll head to Tokyo (a nod to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) where the locals are doing a new kind of street racing.

Dominic spends one more night of passion with Letty before he secretly leaves her during the night.  He leaves behind a pile of cash so that Letty will be able to travel wherever she wants.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, California, Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) is now an F.B.I. agent and in a foot chase with a suspected criminal.  He eventually catches the man and forces him to give him a name . . . David Park.  Brian then tells his supervisor that Park is a scout that recruits street racers for one of the local drug cartels.  It’s through Park that they’ll be able to arrest the cartel’s leaders.

Dominic has relocated to Panama City, Panama, when he receives an urgent phone call from his sister, Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster).  She informs him that Letty is dead.  She was murdered after being in a car accident.  Dominic returns to Los Angeles to attend Letty’s funeral, but he stays in the background.  He knows that the FBI is looking for him.

After speaking with Mia, Dominic goes to the scene of the crime where Letty was murdered.  He examines the pavement and finds traces of nitromethane, a unique fuel for engines.  The nitromethane is so rare that only one car mechanic sells it.  When Dominic visits said mechanic and “convinces” him to tell him who purchased it, the mechanic tells him that it was David Park and the nitromethane was used in a green 1972 Ford Gran Torino.

Both Dominic and Brian set out for David Park, but Dominic gets there first.  Dominic interrogates Park by holding his ankles as he dangles outside of a window.  Brian ultimately saves Park, and Park becomes an informant for the FBI.  The FBI learns that not only is a man called Arturo Braga the head of the drug cartel, but that he’ll be auditioning people to be a new driver.

Park informs the FBI about the street race, and he helps Brian be one of the drivers.  Dominic also learns of the race and he enters it along with two other competitors.  Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot), the liaison for Arturo Braga, informs the drivers that the winner of the race will be the cartel’s newest driver.  This is a street race with no closed streets, meaning that the drivers will have to navigate around traffic and other obstacles.  Their course will be directed to them through the car’s GPS.

The race begins and it’s a wild chase through the streets of Los Angeles.  One of the drivers crashes, and eventually Brian gets knocked off the official course.  However, the official course is only a recommendation, and he’s allowed to continue on his own path.  He eventually rejoins Dominic and the other driver, and soon it’s only Brian versus Dominic.  When Brian uses his nitro to pass Dominic at the end, Dominic spins Brian’s car and knocks him out of the way, costing Brian the race.  After the race, Brian is furious and insists that he would have won the race.  Dominic only replies that he wasn’t aware of any rules for the race.

However, just because he lost the race doesn’t mean that Brian is not eligible to drive for the cartel.  Through his contact, Brian has the FBI make a false arrest of one of the cartel’s other drivers.  They plant some evidence and arrest him.  The charge won’t hold in court, but it’ll keep the driver in jail long enough for Brian to be asked to take his place as a driver.  That’s exactly what happens and Brian becomes an undercover driver along side of Dominic.

That night, Brian and Dominic have drinks with Fenix (Laz Alonso), one of the cartel’s members.  During the party at the cartel’s club, Dominic slips away and discovers Fenix’s car . . . a green Ford Gran Torino.  Meanwhile, Brian does his own investigation and he thinks that he finds shot glasses that were used by Braga and his boss, a mysterious man named Ramon Campos.  He has the FBI run the fingerprints and try to find any matches in the database.

The cartel assembles the drivers, checks the cars for tracking beacons, and then secretly transports them inside of a semi-truck.  They’re eventually taken into Mexico and near the U.S. border.  It turns out that the drivers will be sneaking heroin across the border.  They get into their cars, race across the desert, and follow the directions to a secret tunnel that gives them passage through a mountain and across the border.

North of the border, Dominic confronts Fenix about the nitromethane in his car’s engine and his role in Letty’s death.  Fenix admits that he was the person who wrecked Letty’s car and then shot and killed her.  Before Fenix and Braga’s men can kill the drivers, Dominic’s car explodes.  Dominic had released the nitrous into his car and set a timer with the cigarette lighter.  The explosion causes a distraction that allows Brian and Dominic to escape in a 1999 Hummer H1 containing about $60 million worth of heroin.

The two of them drive back to Los Angeles, and Brian hides the Hummer in a police impound lot.  They then steal a Subaru Impreza and return to Dominic’s hideout.

At the hideout, Brian and Mia reconnect while Dominic does further research into Letty’s death.  When he examines her phone, he discovers that her last call was actually to Brian of all people, meaning that Brian was more involved with her death than previously known.  This enrages Dominic and he fights Brian.  When there’s a pause in the fight, Brian reveals that Letty did what she did to try to help Dominic.

It turns out that Letty was working undercover for Brian and tracking down Braga in exchange for clearing Dominic’s criminal record.  She did it so that Dominic could finally return home.

Brian returns to his superiors and tries to make a deal with them.  In exchange for Dominic’s pardon, he and Dominic will use the captured drugs to lure Braga into a trap.

The trap is set into motion and Braga agrees to appear in person to take the $60 million in drugs.  When an older man claims to be Braga, the FBI jumps into action and tries to arrest him.  The problem is that it’s the wrong man.  Ramon Campos is really Braga.  There’s a ton of gunfire, and Braga escapes from the trap.  Dominic also escapes from the FBI.

Braga flees from the FBI and returns to Mexico.  Although Mexico is outside of the FBI’s jurisdiction, Brian joins Dominic and the two of them capture Braga inside of a church.  Braga’s men are aware of their boss being captured, and they give chase to Brian and Dominic.  There’s a lot of action and gunfire as the cars race through the town and make their way back to the border.

Brian is driving the captured Braga, and they reach the secret tunnel first.  Fenix stays right on their tale, and he pursues them through the tunnel.  Just as Brian is about to emerge out the opposite side, Fenix causes Brian to crash, and both cars wreck when leaving the tunnel.  Fenix frees Braga and prepares to kill Brian.

Meanwhile, Dominic is also racing through the tunnel and avoiding the other drivers.  He jumps into a neighboring car and kicks out the driver, and he causes the other pursuing cars to crash.  Just as Dominic emerges from the tunnel, he sees that Fenix is about to shoot Brian.  Dominic uses his car to ram into Fenix and kill him, finally getting his revenge for the death of Letty.

Just then the police are spotted.  Brian tells Dominic to flee, but Dominic refuses.  He’s tired of running.  When Dominic faces the judge, the judge informs him that (despite Brian’s pleas for clemency) his one good deed does not outweigh his numerous crimes.  As a result, Dominic is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Fast & Furious ends as Dominic is being transported to Lompoc penitentiary in a prison bus.  His situation seems hopeless until he looks out the window and sees Brian, Mia, Leo and Santos surround the prison bus with their cars.  It’s implied that they’re going to free Dominic.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So is 2009’s Fast & Furious a good movie?

I definitely liked Fast & Furious a lot better than The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.  The story was better, the characters were better, and the cars and driving scenes were better as well.  As far as 2 Fast 2 Furious, it’s really a toss up as to which sequel was better.  Fast & Furious had a better story, but 2 Fast 2 Furious was more fun, especially with its driving scenes.

To me, it seems like 2 Fast 2 Furious has almost no impact on the story between the first movie and Fast & Furious.  At the end of the first film Brian left the LAPD and became a wanted man.  He made his way to Miami where the events in 2 Fast 2 Furious took place.  It was in Miami where he was recruited by the FBI to go undercover in exchange of having his criminal record cleared.  2 Fast 2 Furious ended with Brian and Roman Pearce both stealing money from the drug dealer and planning on opening their own garage in Miami.

But here in Fast & Furious, Brian is not only back in Los Angeles, but he’s now an agent with the FBI.  There’s no explanation as to how or why he left Miami and joined the FBI.  Why would Brian do that when he was such a good street racer in Miami?

The only real clue is that early in this movie Brian’s supervisor makes a comment about him being reinstated with the FBI.  Does that mean that Brian was really with the FBI from the very beginning, and when he was with the LAPD in the first film, that he was actually undercover with the FBI?  Undercover in the FBI working as an undercover LAPD detective, perhaps to check on the LAPD or to work a different angle in the truck hijackings?

We can only guess at this point since Brian’s actions throughout the storyline aren’t exactly clear.  When you take the movies at face value, it still seems like nearly all of the actions in 2 Fast 2 Furious are irrelevant when you compare The Fast and the Furious with Fast & Furious.

Fast & Furious (2009) – movie trailer

But that’s not a major problem.  2 Fast 2 Furious was still an entertaining movie, and Fast & Furious is a terrific sequel to the first film.

Brian O’Conner – “I lied to you. I lied to Dom, I lied to everybody. That’s what I do best. That’s why the feds recruited me.”
Mia Toretto – “Maybe you’re lying to yourself. Maybe you’re not the good guy pretending to be the bad guy. Maybe you’re the bad guy pretending to be the good guy. Did you ever think about that?”
Brian O’Conner – “Every day.”

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Brian O’Conner – “Ya know, I’ve been thinking, when you blew up your car, that means you blew up mine too.”
Dominic Toretto – “Yeah?”
Brian O’Conner – “Yeah, so now you owe me a 10 second car.”
Dominic Toretto – “Is that right?”
Brian O’Conner – “Yeah.”
Dominic Toretto – [breaks window to steal a Subaru WRX Sti] “Now we’re even.”