"Fast and Furious" has everything a growing boy needs: fast cars, hot women and enough fiery crashes to fill out the rest of the movie. The original cast is back, with Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor having moved up in the world to the FBI and forced to return to undercover street racing alongside Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto.
Audiences have come to have certain expectations of the "Fast and the Furious" films: bone-rattling races, barely-clothed and incredibly beautiful women and a plot that revolves around getting from A to B while being shot at, blown up and launched around corners which only the greatest of Hollywood magic cars could ever hope to withstand. The fourth in the franchise, "Fast and Furious" delivers in spades, even managing a noble effort at a tacitly plausible plot and creating almost tender moments between the characters. There even manages to be a fair bit of humor mixed in to what is predominantly a massive, high-octane thrill ride.
Director Justin Lin thrusts all the flaming nitrous onto the audience with an in-your-face camera style that never lets up. The laws of physics are placed on hold for chase scenes in which cars defy all logic and corkscrew across the screen, on the ground and in the air with energy and enough psychosis to make even the most uninhibited drivers pause. Very much the stereotypical guy movie with its hordes of beautiful women, "Fast and Furious" is even more a car movie, with hydraulics, fuel injection systems, souped-up engines and some of the most beautiful cars and hippest automotive humor. Even those with a layman's appreciation of cars will find themselves swept up in talk of wheels and gears and the tightest turns you'd never attempt even in your wildest dreams.
What the franchise is not known for is plot, though even in that area the film is not a bust. Whereas certain "Fast and Furious" predecessors opted to have little, if any, plot, the film makes a valiant effort even as the audience experiences the rush of crashes that no one could ever survive in real life. With holes to spare certainly, it still manages to follow a logical and plausible series of events across the story. What gaps exist are passable and are set against all that is beautiful in "Fast and Furious" - cars, women, scenery - and are thus easily forgiven.
The film is everything you expect it to be and nothing you don't. Fast and beautifully shot, the returning cast makes for a nice piece of nostalgia even as all that is old is blown up and all that is new is blown up soon after it. As it plays into sterotypes of masculinity, garden-variety males will get their hearts' content, their dream garages with their dream muscle cars and their dream girls wiping it down with her shirt. Strap yourself in and feel the power under the hood. You don't have to think about it - you just have to buckle up, keep your eyes on the road and let the road take you wherever it will go, and you'll definitely have plenty of shiny things to look at along the way.
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