For some of this movie's runtime, I found it kind of charming, but it got really tedious at a point. I hope Vin Diesel and Paul Walker get better as the series goes on - both gave kind of awful lead performances here.
It probably doesn't help that I find cars boring and street racing stupid. That should be enough to turn me away from a series like Fast and Furious, and it has for 20+ years... but I'm fascinated by the way the series as a whole started small and morphed into something else. It's a progression I want to experience, but starting off with this first movie (as one has to do)... it was rough!
The racing scenes are pretty boring, the performances are sometimes pretty bad, and the narrative is a dull kind of "undercover cop falls for the people he's supposed to take down" thing that's been done before and done better.
Sign me up for the more over-the-top entries that verge away from racing. I think I'll enjoy them more (I saw Fast Five years ago and found it better than this... the only other movie from the series I've seen in isolation is Tokyo Drift, and I remember finding that one more watchable too).
So, the original The Fast and the Furious... it's not for me, but I am keen to keep chipping away at this series, because it's been a pop culture blindspot for me for too long. The start of it all proved to be surprisingly lame and boring though, in my opinion.
It probably doesn't help that I find cars boring and street racing stupid. That should be enough to turn me away from a series like Fast and Furious, and it has for 20+ years... but I'm fascinated by the way the series as a whole started small and morphed into something else. It's a progression I want to experience, but starting off with this first movie (as one has to do)... it was rough!
The racing scenes are pretty boring, the performances are sometimes pretty bad, and the narrative is a dull kind of "undercover cop falls for the people he's supposed to take down" thing that's been done before and done better.
Sign me up for the more over-the-top entries that verge away from racing. I think I'll enjoy them more (I saw Fast Five years ago and found it better than this... the only other movie from the series I've seen in isolation is Tokyo Drift, and I remember finding that one more watchable too).
So, the original The Fast and the Furious... it's not for me, but I am keen to keep chipping away at this series, because it's been a pop culture blindspot for me for too long. The start of it all proved to be surprisingly lame and boring though, in my opinion.