Published on Monday, April 6, 2009

movies

'Fast & Furious' zooms into first place in the box office but fails to impress with unoriginal plot and unrealistic action scenes


By JEN HANCE
Last updated on 04/06/2009 at 12:49 a.m.

“Fast & Furious” sped through its opening week and somehow clinched the spot at first place in the box office with over $70 million, the biggest opening this year. Such a feat was only accomplished by compiling a regurgitated version of a testosterone-driven muscle car movie with the same cast of the first installment of this quadrilogy.

Vin Diesel returns to the muscled bad-boy role of Dom Toretto; he makes guys jealous and the ladies drool. While in “The Fast and the Furious” Dom’s recklessness and mysterious mannerisms made him so awesome, these not-so-subtle quips are blown out of proportion in the new film.

His hulk-like temper tantrums have him throwing people through bookcases and tables, crushing heads with engines and tossing people out of windows.

While Dom’s fugitive superhero character is fun to watch pull off impossible feats, they are not as realistic and raw as the first film. Paul Walker as the undercover cop, Brian O’Conner, is dry and boring, and his dialogue sequences have no depth. He will put you to sleep and make you miss an amazing fast-paced car race and hundreds of women that seem as if they were kidnapped
from rap videos.

Even though it’s always entertaining to see extreme cars being pushed to their limits, and some impressive stunt work and special effects make us forget the dancing wimp Diesel played in “The Pacifier,” “Fast & Furious” doesn’t come close to what “The Fast and the Furious” did for us eight years ago.

Watching the extended version of the trailer for this film is better than sitting through the excruciating hour-and-a-half-long movie of lame macho pick-up lines and comments relating women to cars, boring dialogue and over the top stunts.

Let us be happy with the first try, because this one comes across like producers are beating a dead Mustang.

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