Twenty years on
Twenty years ago this week, a film came out that really meant something to me. It was an interesting moment in my life. I was turning 40, young enough to remember being young; not old, but feeling old more often than not. Work was bad, the news was worse. I was just married, still adjusting to living as if another person mattered, thinking seriously - for once - about the future.
I saw The Fast and the Furious on cable late one night, and was spellbound. It had a budget of $38 mm and, like a few other films of that era (your time was too short, Executive Target), 90% of that money went into the special effects. It worked out: they made it all back on opening weekend, and the movie blew up from there. The trailer is a fair and honest representation of the work:
This catches some of the film’s greatest strengths, and, with the flying Dodge Charger at the end, its greatest stunt. That scene was the culmination of an incredible series of stunts throughout the film. The Fast and the Furious won Taurus awards for:
Best Driving
Best Work in a Vehicle
Best Stunt by a Stunt Man [flying Dodge Charger]
Best Stunt by a Stunt Woman
Best Stunt Coordinator
This would have been enough, but the film had something else: a near-perfect cast. Shea Serrano writes
Every single casting decision [casting director Ronna Kress] made was exactly right. Vin Diesel is perfect as Dominic Toretto. Paul Walker is perfect as Brian O’Conner. Michelle Rodriguez is perfect as Letty Ortiz. On and on like that, all the way down the cast list. It was an incredible performance by the casting director. She was on some Klay Thompson’s 37-Point Quarter shit.
Diesel and Walker brought a somewhat dodgy script to life, infusing set pieces that might have been lifted from the TV show Emergency! with real emotional intensity. This was the moment (from 2:00 on in the clip below) where I realized that - dumb as it was - this was more than just a car movie . Walker sells the B-movie plot twist (he’s a cop!) to perfection, and Diesel, betrayed, seals the deal without saying a word:
“He’s going into shock!” The spell is broken, and finally Dominic Toretto focuses up and starts living all this loyalty shit he’s been talking about. Brian O’Conner may be a cop, but in that minute-and-a-half, he’s the only person trying to save Vince’s life - not out of loyalty, but because it’s his job, and because it’s the right thing to do. And he has to keep checking Toretto while he’s doing it, because the prima donna may go apeshit at any time.
The Toretto character is so endearing in this film because, while he lives by a code, he’s not a smart man. Despite two years of hard time he has re-committed to the chaotic stupid lifestyle. He takes insane risks, trying to hijack trucks with armed drivers for a most uncertain return. He’s pissed off the Chinese gangs. He is known to the Police. His life situation is the logical outcome of a long series of poor decisions.
O’Conner is a different animal. He may be a better driver than Toretto. His risk tolerance is certainly higher, as the scenes where Toretto has to sit in the passenger seat repeatedly show.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see a lot of parallels between Walker’s O’Conner and Luke Skywalker. The gifted kid, coming out of nowhere. Pretty boy, immature, but too good to ignore. And, like Star Wars, there are missing fathers, and some color games. Toretto drives his father’s black 1970 Dodge Charger, and it has an unmistakably Vader-ish vibe.
Well, ok, where’s the white car, then? In another movie, Vanishing Point - the one where Kowalski drives a 1970 Dodge Challenger to his doom. Both films are about brinksmanship. The brutal and bewildering ending to Vanishing Point features a confrontation between Kowalski in his Challenger, and a couple of bulldozers. The result is a B-movie existential riddle:
Vanishing Point is an uneven film, and was not well-received. Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin wrote that it “might have had a point, but it ... ah ... got lost.” Nevertheless, it has its admirers. In 2000 Janusz Kaminski - who won Oscars for his cinematography on Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List - told an interviewer that he had seen Vanishing Point as a young man in Poland.
I have not seen it in more than 20 years, not at all. But I have this great recollection of thinking as I was watching it, 'Wow, this is what America is all about; this is what freedom of expression is all about.' Here is an individual who is willing to sacrifice, even to sacrifice his own life, for the sake of his idea of freedom and independence.'
So ends The Fast and the Furious. Toretto is willing to risk everything for his freedom, and if he does not look forward to oblivion, seems not to fear it either. He leads O’Conner into a race to the brink, their adversaries a train (averted) and a truck (not). The scene is damn near perfect:
When the last hubcap has rattled to rest, decisions must be made. Gun-in-hand, O’Conner is the one person who can take Toretto’s freedom. But he relents: “I owe you a ten second car.” It is about honor, after all.
The Fast and the Furious is too full of vices and cliches to be a great film, but it is fascinating. It has an odd kind of optimality. It is about as good as a B-movie can be: if it were any better, it would be worse. It entertains, it is true to its genre, and it comes by its artistic effects through honest tradecraft and effort.
I like these kinds of movies. I enjoyed Executive Target and Action Jackson, but I don’t need to see them again. The Fast and the Furious is a little different. It’s stayed with me. I have seen that race, that train, that crash, in my sleep.