Image Credit: Everett Collection
How did The Fast and the Furious become one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood? The original film was a campy mash-up of West Side Story and Point Break, filled with hack-and-slash car chases that overdosed on digital effects. The Diesel-free sequel was actually named 2 Fast 2 Furious and basically played out like a very special episode of Fastlane, which is a TV show you’ve hopefully never heard of. The third film — immortally subtitled Tokyo Drift — should have put the nail in the coffin, but new director Justin Lin turned out to be the rare commercial filmmaker in modern Hollywood who could actually film action scenes without resorting to pointlessly obtuse hyperkinetic editing.
The unexpectedly potent reunion of Paul Walker and Vin Diesel in 2009′s Fast & Furious made for a fun diversion. But that was just a warm-up. Because nothing could have prepared the world for Fast Five. READ FULL STORY »
