Fast & Furious: the best current action movies?

The Fast & Furious movie series evolved in a really strange way. At the beginning it seems to follow the law of most movie series. The first film is a success but loses its main actor for the follow-up. The second thus uses his partner as hero, but he eventually refuses to make art in the third. The third film is indeed made with a whole new character, and the action is transposed to Tokyo, so the series loose basically any link with the first two, save for a surprise appearance of Vin Diesel at the very end. Without surprise, the third movie will bring back less money than its predecessors. The history could have ended there, and perhaps it was even envisioned.

We are between 2006 and 2008, and Vin Diesel has an urgent need of another success at the box-office. His last success, xXx, was in 2002 and since then he accumulated commercial failures, like the expensive Chronicles of Riddick, which featured one of his signature characters. Matthieu Kassowitz’s Babylon A.D. will not help unfortunately. Thus remain two appealing possibilities; to make sequels to xXx or to Fast & Furious. But his character was killed, albeit off- screen, in xXx2, which was a resounding failure, whereas Fast & Furious 3 succeeded more or less to recoup its budget. The situation of Paul Walker, hero of the first two films, is even less brilliant, since he didn’t seem to have had any great project after Fast & Furious 2. The timing thus seems perfect to again bring together the two actors of the first one. Justin Lin remains as the director of this fourth film which will be titled Fast & Furious, quite simply (the first one was THE Fast & THE Furious).

It’s there that the small miracle occurs. Fast & Furious will succeed in one weekend equalizing the complete American box-office of number 3. The film moves away from the universe of car racing to enter more of a classical “cops & robbers” mode. So a fifth movie is a no-brainer, and it will move even further from the races to enter in full “heist” mode, joining together on its way most of the supporting cast from previous films, including one that was deceased in the third! The film ends with an incredible chase scene between two overpowered cars tracting behind them a giant safe, against the many cars of corrupted Brazilian police officers! Fast & Furious 6 will stay in this way with the same happy result.

The ingredients of this rebirth have much to do with the charisma of the actors. Even Paul Walker, that I had found quite insipid in the first films, has improved considerably in the sequels. The fifth and sixth movies have a cast of impressive size, and miraculously everyone finds his moments to shine there. The actors show a true alchemy on screen. The stunts are well filmed, and even the most improbable appear OK just because we are invested in the characters. The fight scenes are very quickly cut but are always clear. In short, I haven’t seen that almost since John McTiernan (Die Hard 1 and 3)!

Fast & Furious is a rare example of a series which improved considerably over time. Episodes 7, 8 and 9 are almost guaranteed, with the hero of the third joining the team (the third film, chronologically, takes place between the 6th and the 7th)! Only cloud in sight perhaps, the director of the series from 3 to 6, Justin Lin, passes the torch to James Wan. Jason Statham will be the main villain. So, to be continued, and if you don’t know it yet, here is a great series of films to be discovered!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkrXd37BYIA