Fast & Furious: Review By Velvet

Paul Walker was my favorite undercover cop in the early 2000s and now hes back as an FBI agent..trying to go undercover again, but slightly above-cover. Okay everything else in this movie was awesome. One race in the entire movie, but the best film in the "Fast and Furious" series, well.. this one is actually titled "Fast and Furious".

Starring Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster, the fourth installment of the Furious franchise hits the money and sucks you dry.

The Story is the main focus of this movie, as in most all movies, but this "Furious" story is a little different then the rest of the films. It focues more on back-tracking and not a whole lot around racing. I'm not going to give a lot way here but its main focus is on Diesel and grievances for the death and his cope with Walker and his life sentences chased by the LA coppers and feds.

Above all, it's more of a drama than it is an action or suspense or 'racing' film. I'm not gonna delve into the deepest points of the plots, but what I found that was interesting was how it revolved around Brian O'Connor (Walker) going against but still friends with Dominic Torreto (Diesel) the plot hole of the story. Even though they are friends, the movie outlined them as sort of 'fake' enemies, but only to get what they were looking for. Its sad to see some main characters go, including one from the previous film "Tokyo Drift" which offset the series but was indeed a successful "Furious" movie.

The acting in this one is superb, and the best of any "Furious" film, in my opinion. It was core to the main plot that it needed to show good acting and good character development and it produced just that. Each racer or ally or enemy produced above average acting, even for some new actors as well. To give such good acting to a drama-paced racing film it was excellent.

Both Diesel's and Walker's characters have grown and expanded and improved so much from the first film that it clearly puts them in an acting duo. Much granted drama is produced from both characters and a lot of classic car rumbling. These guys have done their best for this film and it came out well done.

The one race that proved to be a great race was indeed sad to see for a "Fast and Furious" film. The past three had more than three different races in each, but this one merely scratched that feature. Even though it is supposed to be a racer film it only came up with one race. Yet, it proved to be good as mentioned before, and it affected the story perfectly. Sarcasm to the 'cheaters' to put it best. (wink wink at Diesel)

The Setting is desolute, empty, urban and rural all together, which is unique. It goes from busy LA to county, to LA to the beach, to LA to Mexico, to LA then back to the deserts of Mexico. Cool? Weird setting(s) for this one. It somewhat went along with the plot, but it could've been better. The production team should have expanded a bit more into Mexico or cities in Cali rather than one and one, and it didn't really affect the story, it only added more useless bits and pieces to it to add hype toward the ending.

A dramatized story rather then raced, great acting and much character development, but flimsy setting, this "Fast and Furious" nailed the hot spot in the driver's seat for the opening summer blockbuster of '09. The best in the series and the most detailed and charasmatic.