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The Rewatchables · January 22, 2019

The Fast and the Furious

host Bill Simmons host Shea Serrano

What aged best: The writing of Dom's speech about his father's death
What aged worst: Jordana Brewster's driving
Sequel or remake: Yes

All 17 categories

Roger Ebert
Dion Waiters Award Ja Rule

Most Rewatchable Scene · 16:04

Dom's post-race 'you almost had me' speech to Brian

The plot is summed up as truck heists that Paul Walker's undercover cop first pins on Dom's crew, then on Johnny Tran's, with a twenty-second fake-out on Hector's crew, before circling back to Dom once he has shared a Corona with Vin Diesel; the movie is described as centered on rewatchable scenes with recovery stretches between them.

Nominees: the first big street race; Dom's quarter-mile-at-a-time speech about his background, with special recognition owed to whoever wrote real dramatic acting for Vin Diesel; his flipping out at the street race when Johnny Tran accuses him of selling him out, with the line 'I never knocked on nobody'; the aborted truck hijacking with Vince dangling from the car; and the last ten minutes.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:00:41

"I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. Not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those 10 seconds or less, I'm free."

Nominated: 'You can have any brew you want. as long as it's a corona', recommended for high school yearbook quotes because it phrases a non-choice as a choice; and 'it's not how you stand by your car. It's how you race your car', another yearbook candidate.

The film

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Directed by Rob Cohen · Drama

107 minutes

IMDb Letterboxd JustWatch

Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Cast credits have not been imported yet.

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

11:37

Roger Ebert's review

In the discussion (1)

Approx. transcript time · 00:11:37Read transcript

Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 53 percent, which the hosts find terrible; Roger Ebert, said to be having a rough 2019 on the show after The Godfather and Old School, gave it three stars and really liked it.

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16:04

Most Rewatchable Scene

Dom's post-race 'you almost had me' speech to Brian; Dom's 'quarter mile at a time' speech

In the discussion (10)

Approx. transcript time · 00:16:04Read transcript

The plot is summed up as truck heists that Paul Walker's undercover cop first pins on Dom's crew, then on Johnny Tran's, with a twenty-second fake-out on Hector's crew, before circling back to Dom once he has shared a Corona with Vin Diesel; the movie is described as centered on rewatchable scenes with recovery stretches between them.
Nominees: the first big street race; Dom's quarter-mile-at-a-time speech about his background, with special recognition owed to whoever wrote real dramatic acting for Vin Diesel; his flipping out at the street race when Johnny Tran accuses him of selling him out, with the line 'I never knocked on nobody'; the aborted truck hijacking with Vince dangling from the car; and the last ten minutes.
One host's most-rewound scene, after ten to fifteen viewings now that it is on Netflix, is the speech after the first race rather than the one in the garage: Dom putting on a show for the crowd, arms out, jibbing and jabbing at Brian to learn what he is made of while letting him know who runs things, the most we see of what Vin Diesel can do as an actor; the clip with 'Granny shifting, not double-clutching like you should' and 'Winning's winning' is played and becomes the sixth nominee.
Vin Diesel, like The Rock, belongs to everybody because he checks every box; this was the first big-budget action movie where representation felt like a big part of it, with Ja Rule, the Johnny Tran gang and Hector, and that diversity, mirrored in the theater audience, is credited as a reason the franchise became so huge, even though nobody can pin down his background.
Dom is written with a core and a code rather than as an emotionless tough guy: you don't tell on people, you take care of your family and your car; the hosts run the action-lead lineage from Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson through Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Swayze and Nick Cage and note the leads were almost always white, with Wesley Snipes, Eddie Murphy and Carl Weathers the rare exceptions.
The eighties were the steroids era, with Stallone and Schwarzenegger making nineteen action movies between them, then Die Hard and Roadhouse moved to smaller guys with a philosophy degree; Vin in this role was the first big guy doing the philosophical stuff, able to give the speech about watching his dad die and also body slam The Rock, and his height remains amorphous, somewhere between 5'4 and 6'4.
Vin Diesel also has the unintentional comedy Schwarzenegger and Stallone had, where imitating the voice or the walk is funny; one host enjoys making fun of how he drank a Corona and calls the acting good but also terrible, which the other rejects outright.
The defense is that he is so committed he might believe the Fast and the Furious is real and Dominic Toretto's family is his; both enjoy his weird run with the arms held low, ranked with the girl in Taken among the weirdest runs in recent action movies, though he is reportedly very coordinated and a former background dancer.
Polled, one host goes with the post-race speech because it shows both Brian and Dom doing their stuff, Brian remarkably charming and peacocking with a little Dion Waiters irrational confidence; a clarification follows that Paul Walker is considered a good actor while Vin Diesel's acting is enjoyed without being called good.
The other host's favorite is the quarter-mile-at-a-time speech, remembered from the theater as unclear whether it was serious yet amazing; it is recited, called really touching, and the host always sticks around for it when it is on TV.

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27:15

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...

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.

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35:08

What’s Aged the Worst?

Jordana Brewster's driving; Jesse flaking at Race Wars (disputed); Dom's account of beating Kenny Linder; the green-s...

Jordana Brewster's driving; Jesse flaking at Race Wars (disputed); Dom's account of beating Kenny Linder; the green-screen train-track jump and the NOS camera zoom; Brian's haircut

In the discussion (7)

Approx. transcript time · 00:35:08Read transcript

Jordana Brewster's driving is pretty rough and never realistic to one host, who never bought it.
Without stepping on the research segment: neither Jordana Brewster nor Michelle Rodriguez had a driver's license before the movie and both needed intensive driver training.
Why Jesse flakes at Race Wars is one host's pick: he races his dad's car against Johnny Tran, loses, and drives away; the defense is that he just lost the car that was his whole world and his plan to share a car with his dad after prison, and that Johnny Tran, head of what the hosts call the Asian car mafia, is not someone to cross, though by then he had only been seen pouring oil in a man's mouth, shooting up Dom's car and holding a gun; the rebuttal is to stop making excuses for Jesse.
Dom's speech about seeing Linder a week later, hitting him with a wrench until he could not lift his arm, leaving him an elementary-school janitor who takes the bus, and being banned from the tracks for life, strikes one host as a lot to put on Dom's plate; the other argues it has to be pushed that far so we see him struggling with how bad he can be, since he is not violent again until the narc accusation from Johnny; his two years in prison prompt a prequel idea.
The special effects on the jump over the train tracks had to be cut around a green screen and are noticeable in 2019, as is the first race's shot where the camera zooms through the windshield and out the back of the car when they hit the NOS; 2000 was before CGI really got good.
By Fast 7 in 2015 the cars go through two skyscrapers in Dubai and it looks a hundred percent real; the CGI that completed Paul Walker's scenes after his death midway through filming, using his brother as a body double, is noticeable in the beach scene or when he pulls up in the car if you pause, yet counts as an incredible job; one host had no idea it had been done until reading about it.
The hosts compare where they saw Fast 7, one at Grandland (as transcribed) with Rafe and Mark Lasanti, the other with a spouse, and whether they cried at the ending, agreed to be one of the most emotional; Fast 7 is promised as a future episode. The final aged-worst pick is the special effects, with Brian's haircut as a runner-up thought.

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41:54

Casting What-Ifs

The studio would greenlight only with Timothy Olyphant as Dom, and he declined; Neil Moritz suggested Vin Diesel off ...

The studio would greenlight only with Timothy Olyphant as Dom, and he declined; Neil Moritz suggested Vin Diesel off Pitch Black; Mia was written for Elijah Dushku (as transcribed), who turned it down; Colin Farrell was pushed for Dom at one point

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 00:41:54Read transcript

The studio told the producers they would greenlight the film if they got Timothy Oliphant (as transcribed), who had starred in the previous year's car blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, to play Dom; he declined, which the hosts think was a bad move for him but good for the film, since Vin checked many more boxes than another white guy in an action movie; Neil Moritz suggested Vin Diesel, coming off Pitch Black, a perfect call.
Mia was written for Elijah Dushku (as transcribed), who turned it down, a tough one since Jordana Brewster went on to five films and multi-millionaire status; everything else was built around Paul Walker, for whom the movie was made.
Colin Farrell was pushed for Dom at one point, a what-if that surfaces late during research; the hosts like him and SWAT but pass, joking that Vin Diesel would then have to take Phone Booth, which would have been better with him.

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42:54

Recasting Couch

Ryan Gosling as Jesse

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 00:42:54Read transcript

Asked whom they would swap in, from only the first film, one host admits a lot of problems with Jordana Brewster as the series goes along but thought she was pretty good here; the other has no problems with her in any of the movies and answers a 'she can't act' jab with the franchise's five-billion-dollar gross as proof the actors are pretty good.
The proposal is Ryan Gosling as Jesse, since the guy who plays Jesse looks like a slightly less attractive Gosling; the other host agrees the Jesse part could have been improved, Vince is perfect and cannot be touched, and Leon obviously did not work since he was written out after the first one.

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43:58

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Ja Rule

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 00:43:58Read transcript

The award needs someone who was not in the movie much, and both hosts land on Ja Rule at once: his whole part is a running sexual proposition that never pays off and gets him laughed out of the movie; Johnny Tran was the only other possibility considered.
Part of the appeal is that it is Ja Rule, a big-time star at the time; he and DMX in the 1998 to 2003 range were way bigger than they get credit for now, and a Ja Rule scene was a genuine thrill in the theater; he wins.

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44:56

Half-Assed Internet Research

Working title Redline; the title was owned by Roger Corman and traded for stock footage; Dom's house is really at 724...

Working title Redline; the title was owned by Roger Corman and traded for stock footage; Dom's house is really at 724 East Kensington Road in Echo Park; LA locations including Dodger Stadium and San Bernardino International Airport for Race Wars; the rig heist on Domagoni Parkway (as transcribed); Neil Moritz's Ferrari cameo; the Neptune's Net nod to Point Break; an alternate ending with Brian resigning from the LAPD; 1,500 real drivers at Race Wars; Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez dated during filming; the camera-truck rig for driving shots; Brewster and Rodriguez had no driver's licenses; Vin Diesel and the director chose XXX over the sequel

In the discussion (12)

Approx. transcript time · 00:44:56Read transcript

The working title was Redline, which sounds like a Nick Cage or Timothy Olyphant Netflix movie; redline refers to a car's maximum speed; the title The Fast and the Furious belonged to director Roger Corman, who traded it for some stock footage owned by Universal Studios, a trade jokingly ranked with the Luka Doncic trade.
One host thought the title was bad when it came out and loves it now; it is a running frustration that in all the ridiculous things the series has done nobody has ever said 'the Fast and the Furious', and the hosts script how Dom could have dropped it into the 'Salud Me Familia' toast after the heist before cutting to credits.
A tangent on saying 'Salud Me Familia' at Ringer holiday parties, and on how by Fast Five even people barely in parts two through four were part of Vin's extended family: a touch on the forehead or passing the barbecue sauce gets you in.
Dom's house shows the address 1327 but the real house is at 724 East Kensington Road in Echo Park, blocks from Dodger Stadium and now a tourist place; the hosts plan a field trip to shoot an Instagram video re-creating Jesse getting shot, one as Jesse and one as Vin crawling across the yard.
Key LA locations: the Dodger Stadium parking lot where Brian tests his car in the opening, Angelino Heights, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Little Saigon, and San Bernardino International Airport as the venue for Race Wars, which one host of sixteen years in LA had never heard of; the entire rig heist was filmed on the Domagoni Parkway (as transcribed) on the south side of the San Jacinto Valley.
Producer Neil Moritz made the movie happen and cameos as the bald driver of the black Ferrari who drag races Brian and Dom, as he told the hosts on an earlier podcast; the Malibu lunch at Neptune's Net on the Pacific Coast Highway is a little homage to Point Break, where Lori Petty's character worked there.
Asked whether Brian being a cop was a surprise on first viewing, since the film does not hint at it until the police pull him over, one host already knew from reading that it was Point Break and wishes that had not been the case.
An alternate ending was filmed in which Tanner drops Brian at the Toretto house, Mia is packing to move away, and Brian reveals he has resigned from the LAPD and has time; the hosts are glad it is not in the movie. Over 1,500 real drivers brought their cars to the Race Wars scene.
Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez dated during filming, which delights the hosts, who argue it should have been a magazine-cover story the way Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were and imagine how cool a kid of theirs would have been.
To put the real actors behind the wheel at 80 to 100 miles an hour, the production built a rig: a high-powered truck with a long chassis driven by a stunt driver while the actors steered a dummy car and bounced along; the hosts guess this decade just puts cameras in the car or uses CGI, and recall the chase in Ronan (as transcribed), where the lead actor, filmed beside the real driver, looks terrified and never cool for a single second.
Stepping on research earlier: neither Jordana Brewster nor Michelle Rodriguez had a driver's license before the film and both needed intensive driver training.
Forgotten research surfaced during Who Won: the director and Vin Diesel skipped Fast 2 to make XXX, wanting to own a franchise themselves; the hosts are unsure it was a good career move and place XXX in a weird era of music, video games and sports heroes, X games and Grand Theft Auto; Vin was pulled back for a cameo and did not really return until four.

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52:19

Apex Mountain

Matt Schultz (as transcribed), who played Vince; Neil Moritz

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 00:52:19Read transcript

The OGs Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Michelle Rodriguez did not get there with this movie; Jordana Brewster is arguable, since she was the best of them here and seemed headed for bigger stardom than she reached; the one definite Apex Mountain is Matt Schultz (as transcribed), who played Vince and who in 2001 could plausibly have gone on to bigger and better things.
The other host cannot separate any one movie from the rest and calls Fast Five Apex Mountain for all of them, the greatest movie of all time alongside Godfather 2, the point where the jigsaw pieces came together, everything got bigger and better, it made a bajillion dollars and became the new James Bond series; Fast Five is scheduled as an April episode.
A hedged suggestion that this might be Neil Moritz's Apex Mountain, for creating a multi-billion-dollar franchise off a Vibe article, is met with 'there's your winner right there'; the jump from stealing twenty DVD players here to a hundred million dollars in Fast Five is marveled at, compared with the truck heists in The Sopranos, and the DVD player heists are belatedly nominated for what aged worst.

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54:15

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Ted Levine or the actor who plays Hector

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 00:54:15Read transcript

One host calls it a no-brainer: Ted Levine, Brian's boss, who played Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and was in Heat; the other had never recognized him and is incredulous, so a Buffalo Bill line is imitated to prove it, with the explanation that he simply carries more weight here.
The other host votes Hector, whose actor's real name is given as Noel (as transcribed) with the surname garbled; the actor looks and acts exactly the same in every role, all of them Training Day type parts set in the same area, so it is probably the same guy; the joke is that Michael Pena plays Hector, Vince and anyone else you ask about in 2019.

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55:49

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

The second police sergeant (not Ted Levine)

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 00:55:49Read transcript

Nominees are Ja Rule, whose acting one host insists was actually perfect, and Ted Levine; the running argument over whether Vin Diesel is horrible or great resurfaces, with Find Me Guilty cited in his defense and the retort that he is fun to pray to rather than to make fun of.
The winner is the other police sergeant, not Ted Levine, who dials it up into almost a parody of every action-movie police sergeant; an impression of his 'if we don't get this' speech is performed and recognized as a character seen many times before.

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56:34

Is This Movie Better With…?

Danny Trejo

In the discussion (2)

Approx. transcript time · 00:56:34Read transcript

Steve Buscemi is disqualified at once for looking sixty years old, though he could have been Jesse's dad getting out of prison for one scene; Danny Trejo versus Michael K. Williams is tough, and the movie arguably needs Michael K. Williams because, other than Ja Rule, it does not have a lot of signature Black performers.
Danny Trejo feels like he should absolutely be in the movie, imagined working at Toretto's Market in a little paper hat as Dom's uncle who just got out and is rebuilding his life, joining the family by Fast Four; the vote goes to Trejo.

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57:40

Picking Nits

Brian risking the break-in at Hector's garage while Vince watched him; no good cops anywhere in the franchise, Hobbs ...

Brian risking the break-in at Hector's garage while Vince watched him; no good cops anywhere in the franchise, Hobbs included; Brian telling Mia he was a cop; nobody can drive fast in the hills of Echo Park; Dom's crew should be rich from six million dollars in stolen goods; the drive from downtown to Neptune's Net makes no sense

In the discussion (6)

Approx. transcript time · 00:57:40Read transcript

Why did Brian risk sneaking into Hector's garage with Vince side-eyeing him at all times? He was checking whether Hector's crew were hijacking the 18-wheelers after ordering three of everything, but with roughly 36 hours left he should at least have noticed Dom and Vince trailing him; not a great cop.
The franchise has never had a good cop and basically hates cops: Hobbs, The Rock's character, takes the wrong safe in Fast Five, gets his team killed, is beaten up by a seven-inches-shorter Vin Diesel, gets his ass kicked in his own police office by Jason Statham, and calls in criminals to catch Decker or Owen Shaw instead of trying himself; Hobbs terrible cop, Brian also terrible cop.
Why did Brian tell Mia he was a cop? He needed her to tell him what was going on as they were leaving with only a couple of hours left; the hosts think he could have let the case go, and the FBI should have been trailing them anyway.
The finale has the cars flying up and down the hills of Echo Park, where nobody has ever gone more than 35 miles an hour; Craig, asked directly, has been there and never seen anyone speeding, since every hill is like a rollercoaster and a four-year-old might run out.
Shouldn't Dom and everybody have been rich after stealing about six million dollars of stuff? The answer offered is that it was DVD players and that Toretto's Market was in the hole, wasting hundreds of thousands on tuna, with Dom's sandwich and soup plans never working.
A late nitpick: from where they live in downtown LA there is no reason to drive all the way down PCH to Neptune's Net for lunch, a hike squeezed in only for the Point Break nod; the place is still open and a shrimp trip is promised.

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1:00:41

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. Not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all ...

"I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. Not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those 10 seconds or less, I'm free."

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 01:00:41Read transcript

Nominated: 'You can have any brew you want. as long as it's a corona', recommended for high school yearbook quotes because it phrases a non-choice as a choice; and 'it's not how you stand by your car. It's how you race your car', another yearbook candidate.
The quarter-mile speech is put forward as the best quote of the movie, and the other host agrees it has to win because the series pulled it into part seven's ending after Paul Walker was gone, with 'that's why I knew you were my brother because you did the same', a thought that nearly chokes one host up; the only other real contender is 'ask any racer, any real racer'.
An addendum: Brian's line before the first race, after Dom mocks his talk of racing for respect and Brian's reply that to some people that's more important, should have been among the quotes; it is the first sign the two will get along, echoed in part eight when Dom hands a beaten racer his car back and keeps the respect.

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1:03:03

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

Yes: a 10-to-12-episode series in LA's street-racing world

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 01:03:03Read transcript

The relatively new 2019 category asks whether it could be remade as a ten-episode Netflix show; Netflix is already doing an animated spy-cars series, but the pitch is the 2001 version stretched over ten episodes: deep in LA's street-racing scene with a gang element like Training Day, seedy and a little dangerous, with Race Wars looming and Johnny Tran involved.
It really could have worked as a show, with ten or twelve episodes in it; The Purge did not work as a show despite expectations, but no current show has dived into that side of LA satisfyingly.
Earlier, Dom's two years in prison prompt a prequel pitch, Dom in prison running foot races or scooters in the yard, abandoned almost immediately.

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1:06:02

Probably Unanswerable Questions

What happened to Toretto's Market? Did Jesse deserve to die? Was Brian a bad or an atrocious undercover cop? Did the ...

What happened to Toretto's Market? Did Jesse deserve to die? Was Brian a bad or an atrocious undercover cop? Did the franchise have a deal with Corona? Who joins Letty on the Mount Rushmore of female action heroes? What happened to Leon? What is Mia studying?

In the discussion (11)

Approx. transcript time · 01:06:02Read transcript

What happened to Toretto's Market once the crew was stealing hundreds of millions from Brazil by Fast Five? Who makes the roast beef and buys the tuna; maybe Danny Trejo's uncle character works it, maybe Dom let the lease expire, or the government repossessed it along with the house and the cars.
Did Jesse deserve to die? One host answers no but holds that racing Johnny Tran at Race Wars and driving away gets you shot; the other points out Jesse did not know whom he was racing until the window came down and could not back out, and that Johnny overreacted, trying to kill four people over a car instead of waiting two hours, which is why he cannot be respected despite his own speech about respect.
Was Brian O'Connor a bad undercover cop or an atrocious undercover cop? Bad rather than atrocious, since he at least taught himself to drive at a really high level in the Dodger Stadium lot.
Did they have a deal with Corona, a question raised by Craig the producer and already in the notes? No; a Ringer story by Andrew found the beer was all gratis.
The Letty Mount Rushmore of female action heroes is thrown to the show's Facebook group: Letty is a lock, then Furiosa from Fury Road, Sigourney Weaver in the second Aliens movie (an action movie if Total Recall counts) and Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, chiseled and doing pull-ups before working out for a movie was cool; an actress may appear only once, so Atomic Blonde is out.
Linda Hamilton's character, prepared for years, still panics and falls to the floor when the Terminator shows up at the hospital, likened to the Halloween remake's forty years of preparation ending in 'you're in my house'.
What happened to Leon, who was part of the family and just did not make it? Nobody could find out, so a theory is built live: every crew member had a specific job, like a basketball team with Dom as James Harden and Vince, the muscle, as PJ Tucker, while Letty makes every other character better; Leon's only job was the scanner, waiting on the sideline during the races.
In the final chase, when Vince is caught up, Leon's is the only car that hangs back listening to the scanner instead of helping, and he goes to get Letty only because Dom's tire is blown; so he was exposed as the most dispensable, dumped from the family, and maybe reassigned to Toretto's Market cutting roast beef and reordering Coronas while the others globetrot and steal billions.
Letty is called a true female action hero and an all-timer, probably on the Mount Rushmore, a question saved for later.
Teased during what aged worst: did Jesse deserve to die, met with an instant no and a promise to mull it over.
At the party after Brian saves Dom, Mia is in her room with a textbook open, clearly studying and maybe taking notes; is she in college, in high school, doing the bookkeeping for Toretto's Market, or studying restaurant management?

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1:12:21

Who Won the Movie?

Paul Walker or Vin Diesel

In the discussion (3)

Approx. transcript time · 01:12:21Read transcript

It is tough: one host would say Vin Diesel but could be talked into Paul Walker, who is beautiful in this movie, with Letty a close third; the argument lands on Brian over Dom because when part two was made only one of the two was in it, and it was not Dom.
The other host's case for Vin Diesel: Paul Walker was already a known quantity, basically a blonde Keanu Reeves bound for Keanu Reeves parts, devastatingly handsome, loved as Lance Harbor in Varsity Blues and the reason one couple saw The Skulls in the theater; Vin Diesel, never seen in Pitch Black, owned the screen in every scene in what was really his first signature movie.
By the end you know that guy is a star; Knock Around Guys, from friends Koppelman and Levine, with its 500 speech, confirmed Vin Diesel would be around for twenty years; the closing thought is that if the measure is who was most overpowering in every scene, it is Dom, electric from the moment he looks over his shoulder at the fight.

Podcast choices

Speaker not identified: Paul Walker
Speaker not identified: Vin Diesel

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More from the conversation

The episode came about by text: an invitation to come to LA for a couple of rewatchables, accepted instantly with a flight booked mid-conversation. The film is called the lost great Fast and the Furious movie, the one that started one of the most successful franchises ever yet airs less than parts four through eight; it is an old-school LA movie with groups of people not usually in movies, and it broke a young Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.

Approx. transcript time · 00:01:45Read transcript

First viewings: one host saw it in college at a small theater with Laramie (as transcribed), the host's wife, and the crowd revved a four-cylinder Ford Tempo to 7,000 RPM in the parking lot; the other was angry it ripped off Point Break so blatantly, came around once it hit cable, saw it in Revere outside Boston and drove the highway home like a bat out of hell; a standard-versus-automatic mix-up and clutch-popping as poor man's NOS follow.

Approx. transcript time · 00:02:52Read transcript

Cars have recurred in movies back to Smoking the Bandit (as transcribed), but this was the first where the cars felt as big as the characters and street racing was a world the viewer is taken into; car culture in San Antonio meant cruising Southwest Military as slowly as possible, Houston had real racing, and LA had rumors of 3 a.m. runs down Highland's straightaways from Melrose to Wilshire, impossible in daytime traffic.

Approx. transcript time · 00:04:06Read transcript

The movie came from a 1998 Vibe article about undercover New York street racing called Racer X, prompting a joke about taking less money and a back-end point; Paul Walker, off Varsity Blues as Lance Harbour (as transcribed) and The Skulls, told Rob Cohen and Neil Moritz his dream project was Days of Thunder meets Donnie Brasco, and they pitched a Point Break remake in LA with Walker's cop infiltrating the racing world.

Approx. transcript time · 00:06:56Read transcript

Why aren't more movies pitched as Point Break and blank, the way Die Hard spawned a template? The formula: a cool group committing crimes you root for, an infiltrator who gets sucked in, a girl, and a lead so cool you don't want to turn on him; a sports-gambling ring is proposed as the next version.

Approx. transcript time · 00:08:52Read transcript

Numbers and future: $38 million budget, $216 million gross, seven sequels and counting, Hobbs and Shaw this year, a ninth pushed back and a tenth around 2021; the simplicity and lower stakes of the first film suggest circling the series back to an older Dom running Toretto's market rather than going to space or a racetrack on Mars; Jordana Brewster being written out after Paul Walker's death was a tough one for her.

Approx. transcript time · 00:09:26Read transcript

The cars: Dom's custom 1970 Dodge Charger, of which one host owns a remote-control version bought at Christmas, and his daily red Mazda RX-7; Letty's dark red 1997 Nissan 240SX; Mia's aqua 1994 Acura Integra; Leon's yellow 1995 Nissan Skyline GTR R33; Vince's blue 1999 Nissan Maxima; Brian's 95 Mitsubishi Eclipse and the orange 1995 Toyota Supra he gives Dom; the hosts work out why second-level cars get souped up rather than buying a Porsche.

Approx. transcript time · 00:11:58Read transcript

Letty appreciation: Michelle Rodriguez came off Girl fight, an ahead-of-its-time movie where she had real gravity; her franchise feats include a one-punch knockout, a harpoon gun in part six, being the only person who can tell Dom what to do, the subway fight, a draw or split decision against Ronda Rousey, and a smooth recovery from amnesia.

Approx. transcript time · 00:12:44Read transcript

Dom's two-point code, no telling and taking care of family and car, plus Vin Diesel's screen presence and ambiguous ethnicity are tied to the film's representation and to the franchise's broad, diverse audience.

Approx. transcript time · 00:19:36Read transcript

Wrap-up: the hosts want to do every Fast and Furious movie separately, with Fast Five, called the greatest and most satisfying action movie ever made and the one that turned the series into a global empire, due in April; a Fast Five dinner scene where a woman instantly knows Jordana Brewster's character is pregnant prompts a riff on movie women detecting pregnancy.

Approx. transcript time · 01:16:02Read transcript

One host saw Fast Six at an 11 p.m. San Antonio showing during the finals, in a comfy recliner theater with a rowdy crowd of kids and strangers all going nuts, and calls it the highlight of a trip that included three finals games; the Vin-and-Rock team-up and the 28-mile runway are saved for a future Fast 6 episode.

Approx. transcript time · 01:17:09Read transcript

Sign-off a quarter mile at a time; next week is Proof of Life with Chris Ryan, one of the every-fifteen-episodes picks the hosts do for themselves, defended as the most underrated Russell Crowe movie and a great kidnap film despite a GQ joke about ending up watching it with your wife; listeners are pointed to Villains on the Ringer Podcast Network.

Approx. transcript time · 01:18:24Read transcript