What’s Aged the Best?
The writing of Dom's speech about his father's death; the Brian versus Vince rivalry; Vince as a character; the youth of the cast; Brian handing Dom the keys; the street races; the idea of family and the barbecue grace scene
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:27:15Read transcript
- The dad speech is read aloud: Dom's father coming up in the pro stock circuit, put into the wall at 120 miles an hour by a driver named Kenny Linder, the screaming that turned out to be Dom's own; the hosts spar over whether he says 'dad' or 'father' and whether Brian and Dom, a couple of weeks and one built car into knowing each other, count as friends; it is called good writing, very touching and very sincere.
- Brian versus Vince has aged the best for one host: a rivalry where somebody immediately decides they hate you and never wavers even after you save their life, with a little love triangle over Mia, sold so well that Vince might have hated Paul Walker in real life.
- Vince is a great character, a blend of handsome enough to pull off Jordana Brewster and scumbag, evil but not too evil; the revisionist case is that everything he said was true, he spotted that Brian was a cop from the daily visits to Toretto's market and the break-in at Hector's, and nobody listened; a homophobic slur before the fight is the one thing that has aged poorly.
- Vince's credibility suffers from wearing two different mesh tank tops in the movie; a mesh-tank-top Mount Rushmore holds only him and Bennett from Commando. The youth of the cast has also aged well after two decades together: Vin's head has gotten bigger, Michelle Rodriguez looks almost a kid of about 22, and everybody was caught at exactly the right time.
- Brian giving Dom the keys at the end is wonderful, and the odd way he holds the keys, by two points rather than between thumb and forefinger, is read as a deliberate Brian O'Connor character choice.
- Street races in general have aged well for one host, who gives any street-race movie a chance; the other counters that they have aged the worst, since the franchise itself abandoned street racing after part three; the woman who waves the flag between the cars and never gets crushed is a favorite detail whose job needs a title.
- The idea of family is one host's pick: seeded in the first movie through the cop who keeps bringing it up and paid off at the backyard barbecue where Vince comes back to eat and kisses Dom on the back of the head, grace is said by Jesse after he reaches for the food first, and Leon helps when he stumbles; it is the thing all the movies have stuck to.
- The other host's pick is Brian versus Vince, a really bitter two-man rivalry with a girl involved, stretched all the way through part five where Vince still does not like Brian despite Brian single-handedly saving his life as he dangled from the truck bleeding; Vince would rather have died to prove his point that Brian was a cop.