As of last week, I had never seen any movies in the Fast & Furious franchise. I probably missed the first one in 2001 because I was planning my wedding or something else equally pedestrian. Then, before I knew it, there were seven more, and I had no chance of catching up.
But now the franchise has lasted longer than any of our president's marriages and has just birthed its first spin-off feature. So I have taken it upon myself to shotgun all eight movies in four days and report back to you what they have taught me about cars.
For the uninitiated, F&F more or less follows the car-crashing bromance of two shredded dude-bros played by Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. The former is a cop-turned-crook-turned-cop-turned-vigilante secret agent. The latter is a street-racing crook who eventually—well, look, there isn't really a job description for what these guys end up doing by the end of the series. When not racing or knocking heads, their relationship consists of Diesel dispensing blue-collar wisdom in a monotone while Paul Walker stares adoringly.
In order to truly understand their relationship, I've ordered the movies below by following the series' internal chronology. Yes, this differs from the release dates. Just because these movies go real fast doesn't mean they always move in a straight line.
Car vs. car: The Fast and the Furious (2001, dir. Rob Cohen)
The single-minded devotion of the first two films to their meathead aesthetic is astounding. Every car gleams. Every man spends as much time at the gym as the women spend waxing. The world is bereft of body fat or ugly people. The only sentences that don't end with "bro" end with "man" or "dude." Everything is "by Christian Audigier." (Not just the clothes; possibly the dialogue, too.) One of Vin Diesel's jacked homeys wears two tank tops at the same time. Hip-hop and jock jams blast continually from every orifice.