Would anyone be recast: Jennifer Lawrence as Naomi is suggested and rejected; Carl Weathers in the Jonah Hill part gives 'smoke crack with me' a different valence and is not considered impossible, to be reconsidered tomorrow.
Cleon; the Warriors' vests; Central Park in seventies movies; Luther; Barry DeVorzen's soundtrack; the gang DJ; the seventies prom couple scene; 'You guys are real good. The best'; the world building; Cyrus
Cleon, the original warlord who is killed after the Rogue in the leopard-print headpiece blames the Warriors, has more scenes in the uncut version; he dies under a pile of elbows from 25 guys, flicks Luther off him with an amazing move, and a Cleon prequel about the rise of the Warriors is wished for; the jackets and shirtless vests also hold up.
A vest with no shirt is never a win unless you are a professional wrestler. — Sean Fennessey
Others disagree about the vest, one joking about wearing a leather vest with sunscreen and phone pockets to the beach before admitting it is not serious; the vest is the part connected to most because of the Orphans scene, where Mercy goads the Orphans into demanding the Warriors remove their colors, which recalls the cuts in Sons of Anarchy that you die before taking off.
Central Park in seventies movies is creepy, empty and dangerous; Luther, the leader of the Rogues, is an over-the-top villain going for it, loved for having no reason for anything he does beyond 'because we can', and one host's son loves how over the top he is.
Whether villains need motivation splits the room: one says explaining a villain is a waste of time, citing the Joker, and two disagree and need a reason; Luther was one of only two actors one host recognized, from Commando, with Remar recognized as Raiden from Mortal Kombat 2.
The actor who plays Luther was purposefully recast by Walter Hill as Luther in 48 Hours, turning on Eddie Murphy's crew, and has been on Twin Peaks and in Spike Lee movies; Walter Hill hit a zone with this film and 48 Hours in how an action movie moves with music.
Barry DeVorzen's weird-guitar soundtrack has aged well, but ending on a big Joe Walsh song creates cognitive dissonance after a black gang beats the Rogues; in the movie's defense there is no hip hop yet in 1979, though Sugarhill Gang existed, and a hard funk record or Across 110th Street would make more sense.
The Orphans scene is too long but the one Orphan asleep who missed the meeting is pitied; the gang DJ is a great device for spreading information in coded language before texting and Twitter.
The seventies prom couple scene is weirdly effective because the film is about guys with no hope fighting all night to get back to the Wonder Wheel, the action-movie version of the end of The Graduate, with the couple looking at Mercy's dirty feet and Swan stopping her from fixing her hair.
'You guys are real good, the best' is a precursor to intentionally hokey, iconic moments like Carl Weathers and Schwarzenegger in Predator; the stilted dialogue is a purposeful comic-book, stentorian, Greek-tragedy theatricality, and nobody talks the way people actually talk. — Sean Fennessey
The world building has aged best for another host: an elaborate gang network with rules and systems that later films such as John Wick's assassin network build on, which is undeniably cool even for a viewer who does not get the Greek-tragedy part.
Cyrus has aged best: a charismatic figure offering hope whose plan makes no sense if you listen carefully, likened to how Trump got elected and to Obama's 2008 'yes we can', and his death four and a half minutes after meeting him is devastating. — Bill Simmons
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.
Eddie Murphy: one host says yes, ahead of Beverly Hills Cop; the other thinks Cop was his Apex Mountain as a better overall performance carried alone, answered with the forty-and-twenty-five box score he puts up here; after Cop, without Nolte or Dan Aykroyd beside him, he and Michael Jackson were the two biggest stars in the world, and both films rank above Trading Places.
Nick Nolte: no; Blue Chips and Prince of Tides are floated, Prince of Tides for success, North Dallas 40 as probably his best performance since you believe he played in the NFL, plus Rich Man, Poor Man watched by fifty million, Cape Fear and Who Will Stop the Rain; a lot of really good work but nothing definitively incredible, so no apex.
Walter Hill: The Long Riders, his Western about the James gang from around the same time, is raised first, but this film is called very high and 'this one' is the answer given; San Francisco is a great movie character rarely maximized like this, with Mrs. Doubtfire, Pacific Heights, Dirty Harry and Bullitt as other San Francisco movies, and the film captures the city's old cow-town backwater quality.
Sonny Landham: no, Predator is his apex, cutting his chest with a knife and waiting for the predator, on the same bill as Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Ventura, his political mentor; James Remar: one hundred percent yes, though one host's wife wanted Sex and the City named instead.
Remar is also great in The Warriors, and Gans has an ignominious ending, roughing up the female cop for no reason, which flips the audience from liking a badass to recoiling; he works constantly, turning up in What Lies Beneath at two in the morning; Olivia Brown's apex was Miami Vice; Frank McRae topped out here.
