(In theaters, April 2009) It’s useless to try to judge this film by most conventional standards. Its sole goal, after all, is to stroke the pleasure centers of automobile enthusiasts (a group that mostly overlaps with Y chromosomes) and its success it directly tied to how much automobile goodness it crams on-screen. The return of the first film’s cast isn’t a bad idea, but the boys have all the fun while the girls are kept off-screen or hastily taken out of the picture. At least Vin Diesel and Paul Walker have some fun rekindling their on-screen rivalry. Action-wise, the standout remains the opening chase sequence: The rest of the picture is a bit too over-edited and CGI-enhanced to make much of an impact. As for the cars, well, they’re a satisfying mixture of modern rice-burners and classic American muscle. It’s a shame that the cheerful multicultural shock of Tokyo Drift isn’t as strong here, but make no mistake: Between the colorful Southern California locale and the reggaeton soundtrack, this is still a twenty-first century motion picture for the young and licensed. It’s fun, it’s not often boring and, most of all, it shows fast cars and girls kissing girls –there’s no denying that it’s another entry in the ongoing franchise.
(Second viewing, Streaming, December 2025) In the Fast and Furious pantheon, the fourth instalment is the boring but necessary one — noticeably limper in matters of action, but still essential in charting the series and reuniting the leads into a more coherent whole that would be developed later on. It’s not a surprise if I hadn’t bothered re-watching it, nor thought about it too much since seeing it: with its sequel redefining the series, it’s hardly an essential watch if you’re into what the franchise became with Fast Five. But taken as a whole, it does have a few high points in-between the drudgery. The opening sequence, in which the series’s fascination for stealing things off moving vehicles is indulged with a five-trailer gas tanker, is the kind o f strong over-the-top action sequence that would become the mainstay of later films in the series. There’s some good-and-necessary character work from Paul Walker (back as a cop, for one film) and Vin Diesel in having the characters reunite not-so-easily, as well as a few more crumbs to Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez. It’s the real sequel to the first film, and it finishes hammering the foundation that the series would use as of the next installment. Still, Fast & Furious remains remarkably duller than it should: Despire acceptable work from director Justin Lin, early good moments gradually give way to an underwhelming third act, hampered (as the film’s production history says) by an undercooked script due to the then-writer’s strike. The villain is dull (with a whole identity-switcheroo plot wrinkle that’s completely useless), the last action scene was a bad idea from the get-go, and the “death” of a main characters is badly handled. While its first act is more easily watchable than I remembered, Fast & Furious gradually reminded me of why I found it so unremarkable — starts off strong, ends with a whimper. Fortunately, much better was to come later.
