Hey!  He did kill Han, right?

by Thom Yee

The Fate of the Furious images courtesy of Universal Pictures

If you had asked me all those years ago in 2001 as I waited for the lights of our theatre to dim and The Fast and the Furious to begin if I thought it would be a movie that could spawn more than six direct sequels, I probably would’ve asked right back, “Who are you?  Why are you talking to me?”  I was hostile like that.  And I usually didn’t talk to strangers.  But if you had, nevertheless, somehow convinced me to share my honest opinion of the movie and its potential to grow into the powerhouse, box-office-ruling franchise it’s become?  I’d probably say, “Pfft.  Yeah. And the American people will one day elect Donald Trump as their first Nazi President.”

But enough with the misdirection jokes. Continue reading →

This time it ain’t just about being fast.  That’s why it’s not in the title.

by Thom Yee

Furious 7 images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

I’ve spent the last two weeks of my life immersed… submerged… consumed… by The Fast and the Furious. Last week I watched (and reviewed) every movie in the series, back-to-back, reaching all the way back to the 2001 original, and that’s something I’ve never done before. Sure, a couple of years ago I did the same with Die Hard, but there were only four of those at the time, one of them is one of the greatest movies of all time, and most of them are better (in some cases considerably so) than most of the Fast and Furious movies. But this time… this time it would be six movies, six movies in a series that’s objectively not that great, and at least one of them is widely acknowledged to be terrible.

Six Fast and Furious movies in a row, all roads leading to Furious 7 and this review.

I can say, after all of that, that I’m now fully a fan of the series.

I would say, however, that I’m also now a worse person for having done all of that.

Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures

Seven movies is a lot.

That’s like four more than most series usually get.

That’s like thirteen to fourteen hours of movies.

That’s like Police Academy territory.

And really the only thing most people remember about Police Academy is that there were too many of them.

The difference with The Fast and the Furious is that the first three are mostly separate pieces — boots and reboots of a core concept that basically reads, “this is a movie about cars.”   Continue reading →