Fast & Furious, Slow & Turgid
This evening, my continuing obsession with Vin Diesel led me to watch Fast & Furious, the fourth installment in the Fast/Furious franchise, a series that takes our culture’s odd tendency to conflate loud gas-guzzling cars and barely clothed females as far it can possibly go. And then it takes it further. And then, somehow, it takes it further than that.
I’m not going to say that this is a bad movie, but only because that would be redundant. Of course it’s a bad movie. It’s not trying to be a good movie. It’s not trying to be anything but an excuse to put cars going very fast somewhere in the vicinity of women not wearing very much, for about an hour and forty minutes. And, honestly, I don’t begrudge it its unremitting assault on the intellect. There’s clearly an appetite out there for exploding cars interspersed with terrible steely-eyed dialog — it certainly appeals to me — so more power to them.
What bothers me, though, are the rudiments of plot and characterization it insists on shoehorning in between the action. Again, not because these interstitial elements are done badly — of course they are — but because it’s clear they’re not even trying to do them well. The perpetrators of this movie had a bunch of action sequences, loud parties, and brief interludes of untitilating not-quite-sex that they needed to throw up on the screen — but no way to stitch them together. What they could have done — what they would have done if they’d had an ounce of pity for their audience — was simply introduce each set piece with little cardboard placards, like the ones they used to use for silent movies. Just pause before each new scene and put up a sign: Car Chase 1, followed by Explosion 1, followed by Car Chase 2, Extreme Close Up Of Woman Wearing Shorts Three Sizes Too Small For Her 1, Car Chase 3. And so on. That would have been fine with me.
But no. They had to go the exposition route.
Case in point: the movie starts with a chase scene in which Vin Diesel and his cohorts are trying to steal gas tankers off of a moving truck. There are cars going very fast and engines revving quite loudly and acrobatics and gunshots and peril and, ultimately, a big explosion — all of which is quite good. There follows, however, an extended sequence in which Vin Diesel’s plight is elucidated via the time-honored medium of terrible dialog and wooden acting. Vin’s had a good run, but he has to move on, because his past is catching up to him. His love interest must be abandoned — but only for her own good. Sad people must stare moodily into the darkness while swelling music plays. There is angst.
But all of this stuff is just watery glue that consistently fails to holds this matchstick house of a movie together. Eventually, we get to the next action sequence — some car chase, the details escape me — which is kind of cool, and then everything grinds to a halt so that more angst can occur. And then there’s another car chase, some angst, a car chase, anger and betrayal, a party with lesbians making out, absolution, something explodes, love is rediscovered (followed immediately by PG-13 not-quite-sex on a kitchen counter) and then car chase car chase explosion collision dead bad guy the end.
This movie, distilled down to its essence, doesn’t need to last longer than thirty minutes, and that’s only if you take the time to throw the inter-scene placards up between the car chases. It would have sucked away an hour less of my life, and been much more enjoyable to boot. But no. They had to introduce a “plot”, and people it with “characters”.
My advice, for the next installment — don’t worry about it. I know you guys see all this story stuff as an annoyance anyway, so everyone would be much happier if you just chuck it aside and spend your energy making stuff go boom. Seriously. I like it when stuff goes boom. Let’s focus on that.
Thank you.
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