Product Description

ON THE TURBO-CHARGED STREETS OF LOS ANGELES, EVERY NIGHT IS A CHAMPIONSHIP RACE. WITH NITRO-BOOSTED FURY, DOMINIC TORETTO, RULES THE ROAD TURNING ALL HIS CHALLENGERS INTO DUST. HE AND HIS RIVAL, JOHNNY TRAN ARE THE BOLDEST, THE BADDEST AND THE BEST. BUT NOW, THERE'S NEW RAGE ON THE ROAD.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5354 in DVD
• Brand: Universal Studios
• Released on: 2002-01-02
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 106 minutes

Amazon.com
A guilty pleasure with excess horsepower, The Fast and the Furious efficiently combines time-honored male fantasies (hot cars, hot women, hot action) into a vacuous plot of crystalline purity. It's trash, but it's fun trash, in which a hotshot Los Angeles cop named Brian (Paul Walker) infiltrates a gang of street racers suspected of fencing stolen goods from hijacked trucks. The gang leader is Dom (Vin Diesel), ex-con and reigning king of the street racers, who lives for those 10 seconds of freedom when his high-performance "rice rocket" (a highly modified Asian import) hurtles toward another quarter-mile victory. Racing is street theater for a lawless youth subculture, and Dom is a star behind the wheel--charismatic, dangerous, and protective toward his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), who's attracted to Brian as the newest member of Dom's car-crazy team.

Director Rob Cohen treats this like Roman tragedy for MTV junkies, pushing every scene to adrenaline-pumping extremes; when his camera isn't caressing a spectrum of nitrous oxide-enhanced dream machines, it's ogling countless slim 'n' sexy race babes. The undercover-cop scenario cheaply borrows the split-loyalty theme perfected in Donnie Brasco; a rival Asian gang adds mystery and menace; and digital trickery is cleverly employed to explore the fuel-injected innards of the day-glo racecars. It's about as substantial as a perfume ad, but just as alluring, and for heavy-metal maniacs of any age, Diesel's superblown '69 Charger proves that Detroit muscle never goes out of style. --Jeff Shannon

Additional features
There's a refreshing modesty to Rob Cohen's matter-of-fact commentary track, which contains one of the more practical dissections of direction voiced on DVD as it covers a mix of nuts-and-bolts filmmaking and cinematic thrill making. And why not? The Fast and the Furious is a sleek, unapologetic speed-demon buddy film, and the collector's-edition disc gleefully revels in the rush. Skip the "making of" featurette puff piece and cut to the visual-effects montage of the film's opening race: behind-the-scenes footage, raw photography, rough computer effects, and storyboards are intercut with the finished scene to give a whirlwind production overview. Other revealing supplements include an eight-camera multi-angle look at the climactic 360-degree flip stunt and an enlightening five-minute featurette about the film's editors shaving the film down to a PG-13 frame by frame, which says more about the MPAA than any danger this film poses to our unprotected youth. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Fourteen-year-olds will hold their heads in misery, but adults may be mesmerized by an awfulness reminiscent of youth movies from forty years ago. The scene: the street-racing subculture of Los Angeles. The characters: a charismatic leader and possible hijacker (the superbly named Vin Diesel), ready-to-rumble female grease monkeys with bare midriffs (including Michelle Rodriguez), and a handsome undercover cop (Paul Walker) who infiltrates the car-racing gang and develops ambiguous loyalties. Rob Cohen, the director, tries hard for B-movie schlock magic, and attains it during the high-speed car chases, which are genuinely exciting. See this when you are too tired to think. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

FAST, FURIOUS, and entertaining
Look. I know that most who've seen this movie (especially the teeenage boys) will automatically tell you "Yea man! It rocked! It's the best movie ever!"

Personally, I'm a tunerhead. I love suped up cars, and the whole street racing scene. I can't say how this movie can relate to the real midnight street racers, but I'm sure it's been Hollywooded up enough to go overboard a little.

But, I was expecting to see terrible acting, a bad script, a bad plot, but cool cars. In reality, the acting is very well done. The script isn't corny, the plot is entertaining, and, well...the cars speak for themselves. (Vin Diesel's Mazda RX7 in the movie just went up for bid on Ebay!) This movie, whether you're into cars, or not, is a must-see. My friends who get bored even when I mention cars and racing still loved the movie for its other aspects. I thought it was awesome, but, hey, to each his own. Why don't you go and see it to check it out?

A very entertaining action/thriller
Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) rules the streets with his "team" in the world of illegal street races. Running a luncheonette and a garage, Dominic makes money to pay for the mortgage on his house, and keep his sister (Jordana Brewster) in school, but that money alone is not enough so he resorts to the illegal ways to keep the cash flowing. Vowing to kill himself before returning to prison, Dominic stays one step ahead of the police until he meets Brian (Paul Walker), an undercover cop investigating a series of bizarre truck heists.

The FBI believe Dominic and his crew are behind the robberies, and it's Brian's job to find enough evidence against, but putting together the case against this crew will prove to be difficult because Brian becomes friends with Dominic and starts to understand his difficult life, and at the same time he is falling in love with his sister. To make matters worse, Dominics rival Johnny Tran drops in to settle some old scores, and the list of suspects in the robbery case is growing larger.

`The Fast And The Furious' is top-notch entertainment. Containing serious action sequences, and a thrilling mystery of the robberies, `The Fast And The Furious scores on many levels. The action scenes are some of the best filmed racing sequences I have ever scene, and the pulsing soundtrack keeps things at a high energy level.

The performances from Walker, and Diesel are right on the money, and the supporting cast of Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Chad Linberg, Johnny Strong and Ted Levine bring life to the characters they play.

Great action, and a pulsing soundtrack will keep you glued to your seat for two hours of entertainment.

Gets off the starting line, but falls short of finish line
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS is a movie with an assortment of far-fetched ingerdients that combine to make up a far-fetched plot. It offers beautiful cars and obnoxious characters who combine for some impressive racing / getaway / highway-jacking scenes.

In the end, however, there is one genuinely worthwhile reason to see this movie: Vin Diesel. This is the first movie I've seen him in and I was quite taken with his acting style. He has an exceptional screen-presence, especially for a relative newcomer to the acting guild. The jury is still out on whether Diesel can play more than just a tough-guy, but even if he can't, he still plays that role very well. I'm looking forward to seeing him in TRIPLE-X.

Beyond Diesel's theatrical performance, the film does not offer a whole lot. The "hero" of the movie is a cop who is less likeable than the "villain" (played by Diesel). He also non-chalantly breaks the #1 rule in a policeman's code-of-conduct: never EVER commit an crime with the efficacy of enforcing a law. But oh, well, this is Hollywood.

If you want a far superior movie in the fast car genre, I would recommend GONE IN 60 SECONDS. To me, it was far more satisfying than this one.