The Fast and Furious (2001) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written January 2nd, 2016*

"Live life a quarter mile at a time" Whatever that means.

It's always interesting to go back and watch films you loved from your childhood only to find out they are quite terrible. The most fascinating thing about The Fast and Furious is just how different it is from the later sequels, it's much more grounded and toned down, but also quite lame and cheesy.

The story is a complete knock-off of Point Break. Paul Walker plays a cop who goes undercover to take down Vin Diesel's street racing circuit, but finds himself getting in way too deep with the people he is meant to be taking down.

It's simple stuff that just reeked of '90s cheese, complete with awful and outdated CGI. Although some of the later action scenes like the truck heist at the end were pretty solid. It's probably unfair to compare the action to the creativity of the later films, but this first entry just feels really uninspired. The editing also feels so outdated and they try and make some of the scenes seem dramatic, but the execution is laughable and cringe worthy at best.

While they try and make you care about these characters to tell a story that is nowhere near as engaging as similar films, it fails dramatically. I haven't seen this in years and I remember next to nothing about it. It feels like one of those films that should have faded into obscurity, but somehow didn't and is now part of a billion dollar franchise.

Tonally it is different from any of the others too, this one feels far more gritty and violent and there's a few more f-bombs too. When people get shot they get a large bloody wound on them and actually get hurt in car crashes, a far cry from the superheroes they are today.

I guess this is the film that made stars of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker too. They are both terrible. 
 Maybe terrible is harsh, Walker isn't bad exactly, but he really was quite bland. Then we had Diesel, who doesn't do much other than try and sound serious with his 'milk bubble' voice. It was just so bad.

The Fast and Furious is far more interesting to watch ironically and to see where this series started, but it really isn't good at all. I don't even like Point Break, but I'd just say watch that instead.

4/10 Dans

The Fast and Furious is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:

Follow us:
Twitter: @FigmentReviews, @DanBremner96 and @ArronRoke91
Instagram: @DanBremner96 and @ArronRoke
YouTube: Figment Reviews
Letterboxd: Dan and Arron 
Facebook 
  

Need for Speed (2014) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written May 7th, 2015*

Need For Speed is the first in the franchise of films based on EA's Need For Speed video-games. The first thought you would have is "Based on a video-game it must suck", but thankfully due to Aaron Paul's performance and some extremely impressive practical effects and lack of CGI, Need For Speed is actually a very solid adaptation.

Aaron Paul plays Tobey Marshall a petrol-head who is framed by Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper) for the death of his friend after a street race gone wrong. After being released from prison he and Julia (Imogen Poots) join a cross country race in order to exact revenge on Dino.

Practical car stunts

While the plot sounds relatively simple, it takes a really long time to get to the actually race. About an hour is given to building Aaron Paul's character, which is a nice change of pace from the way these films usually are, but at the same time it extends the running time of the film to a breaking point. A good 30 minutes of this film could have been cut.

The cast is pretty impressive. Aaron Paul is excellent and handles his first post Breaking Bad role extremely well, he isn't as good as he is in that, but he displays emotion and proves he can be a leading man for films. Imogen Poots is just there, she's fine and has solid Chemistry with Paul. Cooper is forgettable and pretty boring as the antagonist. The supporting cast is really strange, for some reason Michael Keaton is in this, he's OK and has some charisma and fun with his role, but he's mostly a non-entity.

Aside from Aaron Paul, the best and most surprising part of Need For Speed is its the very impressive direction and lack of CGI and a lot of practical effects, which is sadly far too underused these days. It makes the action and racing scenes that much better, you can really tell these were real cars getting trashed and destroyed.

Aaron Paul

People will compare this to Fast and Furious, which is a very fair comparison, but I felt that Need for Speed handled street racing far better than any of the Furious films. In all honesty the Fast and Furious films were never any good until they ditched the racing for over-the-top action and brought in The Rock, which fared the series much better than the Point Break rip-off story with increasingly worse sequels until the fifth.

Need For Speed might lack a strong script and goes on far too long, but thanks to the inclusion of Aaron Paul and practical effects, it's kept from being the rubbish everyone expected it to be. There's room for improvement and there is a sequel in the works, which is set in China. I just hope Aaron Paul's back for it.

6/10 Dans

Need for Speed is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:

Follow us:
Twitter: @FigmentReviews, @DanBremner1996 and @ArronRoke91
Instagram: @DanBremner and @ArronRoke
YouTube: Figment Reviews
Letterboxd: Dan and Arron 
Facebook