“Fast X” is fast approaching, and while it’s hard to imagine anyone cares anymore, worldwide box-office results prove they do. (These films cost $200 million now, but they safely triple their money.) Recent entries have tended toward terrible – losing any interest in stakes, with characters now coming back to life on a writer’s whim.
So it’s easy to forget why we once liked the “Fast & Furious” saga: great car chases and even some organic stunt work, with each film offering up something a little different – enough so we’d forgive the contrivances. While Paul Walker was likeable but never great, Vin Diesel had magnetic charisma before Dom became invincible. And it can’t be denied that a remarkable amount of talent has appeared in these films, ranging from a pre-“Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot to a pre-mentally-checked-out Sung Kang.
The “Fast” saga has seen good times and bad as it has expanded from “a quarter mile at a time” to freakin’ outer space. Here are my worst-to-first rankings of the nine proper movies plus the spinoff featuring Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham). (Click on each title for a full review.)
10. “The Fate of the Furious” (the eighth movie, 2017)
The saga veered toward “We’re not serious anymore” territory in part seven, but part eight proves there’s room for it to get worse. The final showdown involving the fate of the world, a submarine, and car chases on a frozen body of water is obviously illogical and absurd. But that’s not new for the saga. What’s new is that the sequence is overlong, boring and annoying – namely via the quips from Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris). Even Charlize Theron, excellent in other films, is gobbled up by the inanity of supervillain Cipher and her world-controlling scheme.
9. “F9: The Fast Saga” (2021)
This is another installment where “F&F” is unapologetically not set in the real world of physics or the limits of punishment the human body can take (so much so that Roman openly theorizes that they are all invincible). It’s slightly less bad than part eight. The way cars pile up like toys thanks to a super-magnet weapon is amusing, as is the opening riff on “Return of the Jedi’s” speeder-bike chase — but with cars, motorcycles and tanks. Viewing individual action sequences is entertaining in a vacuum. But, even with flashbacks to the racetrack demise of Dom’s father (or, oddly, maybe because of them), the overall experience of “F9” is oddly rote and flat.
8. “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003)
The first sequel seemed idiotic at the time, but now it’s charmingly quaint to see things like the pink exhaust from the car of the female racer (Devon Aoki), the lightspeed effect of the NOS, and Brian (Walker) using the incline of a slightly raised bridge to leapfrog an opponent. It’s interesting to note that Roman is cool here, rather than the “comic relief” he would later become. But he can’t carry the movie with Walker weighing him down. And while his shtick is tiresome now, back in the early days, the absence of Diesel was a notable blow. “2F2F” has a dumb plot wherein the drug kingpin (Cole Hauser) keeps his enemies illogically close, but it’s not boring. The fact that it’s 36 minutes shorter than “F9” keeps it in the realm of watchable.
7. “Furious 7” (2015)
This entry – the 10th highest-grossing movie of all-time, worldwide — is overrated by some because it marks the last appearance of the late Walker (although Brian is not deceased in the story, he’s living the domestic life off-screen). “F7” leans heavily into international spy games, thus inviting a viewer to reflect on how much better this stuff is handled in the “Mission: Impossible,” “Bourne” and Daniel Craig “Bond” films. The action gets laughable (this is the one with the multiple skyscraper jumps), but at least we are laughing, rather than bored. Meanwhile – and I’m not being hyperbolic here – we get three instances where Dom definitely should’ve died if the events remotely took place in reality. He’s now a superhero, but that makes the character worse, not better.
6. “The Fast and the Furious” (the first movie, 2001)
It seems like the original should play as a refreshing throwback now that we’re two decades and many iterations of plausibility down the road. But it’s worse than our memories suggest. It famously has the same plot as 1991’s “Point Break” (with street racing replacing surfing), but that’s not the best film to borrow a plot from. Diesel and Walker simply aren’t Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, although ex-con Dom’s philosophy of living life a quarter-mile at a time does have some poignancy. The soundtrack is annoying, and the plot twist (the murderers run a legal business, whereas the non-murderers are thieves) is stupid. However, the action is good, including a three-pronged highway chase with characters hanging off various vehicles. The stunt work is impressive in an old-school way, making the “Fast” saga – for a brief moment amid the Michael Bay era – relatively realistic.
5. “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (the third movie, 2006)
The only main-saga entry to feature neither Walker nor Diesel (although the latter cameos) represents the “Fast” saga at its highest level of cinematic class, at least superficially. It offers beautiful cinematography of cars doing the titular “drifting” in the streets of Tokyo and the countryside. I don’t think Lucas Black, as an American searching for purpose in a foreign underworld, is as bad as his reputation. This is “American Graffiti” Lite, grafted onto Japan with better car chases and less memorable characters. Through no fault of its own (although it is the fault of director Justin Lin, the saga’s primary guiding force), this film has gotten retroactively dumber, as it takes place a decade later than its release date in order to allow Sung Kang’s Han to stay in the saga. As such, the technology is inexplicably dated and the characters’ apparent ages fluctuate.
4. “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” (spinoff, 2019)
If it didn’t suffer from modern-film bloat (absurdly, it’s 137 minutes long, when it should be 90), this spinoff would rank at the top of the list. As we switch focus to brawn and weapons rather than car chases, Johnson and Statham have amusing chemistry as tough ex-prisoners who are forced to work together. They both almost act like they know they are in an over-the-top action movie. When you combine this with hilarious juvenile pranks such as Hobbs’ fake ID of “Mike Oxmaul,” “H&S” strikes an entertaining tone. Welcome additions Vanessa Kirby, Eiza Gonzalez and Idris Elba make the long run time more palatable, although the latter suffers from having to play a generic supervillain.
3. “Fast Five” (2011)
This is the one where everyone teams up, including Brian and the folks he met in “2F2F,” Dom and his extended family (by blood and otherwise), and the “Tokyo Drift” folks. In 2011, it was rare for such a thing to happen, as usually at least one actor would not sign a contract to come back. The climactic sequence where our heroes drag a bank vault through the streets remains more famous than infamous, standing the test of time because it was mostly done with practical effects. Everyone’s invincibility is established here (Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty returns to life in a mid-credits stinger). But the brisk pacing and creative set pieces are present, so we’re smack dab in the time when the “Fast” saga was fun.
2. “Fast & Furious” (the fourth movie, 2009)
After two films apart, Diesel and Walker recommit themselves for a soft reboot with a title that was confusing at the time — although now it’s par for the course for sequels to have the same or similar titles to the original. The plot is the same as part two’s – featuring a villain (John Ortiz) who keeps cop Brian and rival criminal Dom weirdly close to his operation — and the in-story reasons for car chases are contrived. But the writers still come up with creative sequences, including a drug-running chase through artificial caverns connecting the USA and Mexico. “F&F” – which introduces the appealing Gadot to mainstream audiences — doesn’t quite enter the sphere of political commentary with the illegal tunnels, but it does provide real-world grounding. The international intrigue is a stretch, but in a “24” type of way that we accepted in the Aughts.
1. “Fast & Furious 6” (2013)
The sixth entry marks the last time we’ll ever see a good, brisk, fun “Fast” film – and it’s also the most epic without going so far over the top that “epic” turns into “flat.” The highway chase wherein the villain (Luke Evans as the first Shaw brother) smashes innocent drivers with a tank, and where our heroes catch each other with the hoods of their cars, is insane. But within the film’s nutso context, it’s organic. (Compare “F6’s” story flow to the contrived nature of “F8” and “F9.”) Lin (who also helmed parts 3, 4, 5 and 9) feels like he must top that sequence with a grand finale, so the good guys and their cars take on an enemy airplane as it tries to take off. “F6” features a rare main-character death that seems to have stuck (so far). The driveway BBQ epilog is warm and homey — not yet a cliché – and a viewer’s final impression of this actioner is “implausible but fun.” If the series had ended with part six, we’d be thinking of it with fondness rather than dread over what “Fast X” has in store.