The Llama Ledger - Bard College at Simon's Rock's Student Newspaper

Issue date: 4/22/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Katie Ansel

As a relative fan of the Fast and The Furious series--fan meaning I sat through the first and half of the second one--I was relieved to see that both Paul Walker and Vin Diesel had their acting skills intact.

Usually if people are in such skill-demanding movies as Into the Blue and Pitch Black, their acting skills are usually used up.

Thankfully for the aforementioned actor extraordinaires, nothing, including knowing when to stop, can prevent them from churning out sequel after sequel. Warning: there will be another sequel. Trust me.

After the non-canonical Tokyo Drift, (the third of F&F), auto heroes Vin and Paul (Dom and Brian, respectively) return to the gritty underbelly of L.A.'s street-racing scene.

As a second-generation street racer, I can tell you first hand that what is said in the movie is mostly bogus. Not all of it is inaccurate, though; it is ridiculously easy to dodge a flaming eighteen-wheeler while it somersaults directly at a much smaller car.

I was thankful for this reality, as all too many times I find that chase movies severely exaggerate and distort what street-racing and related auto crimes really are. It's really not too difficult to do. All you really need is a real, real fast car.

Other than that, just make sure you know how to drive at 80+ miles per hour while having no regard for traffic laws in rush hour L.A. It is a sport anybody can excel in...unless, of course, you don't have a car. Then you have to do the same stuff on rollerblades. And you can't be cool with those things on.

In the film, Vin and Paul modify their cars to compete for a spot as a drug cartel's driver. Though a very lucrative job, they must prove themselves as worthy drivers. If they prove incompetent, it could mean their lives.

Because this is not the final movie in the series, they obviously don't die. And if you didn't see that one coming, chances are your brain capacity should prohibit any driving privilege you might have, also meaning that you shouldn't be watching this movie, as it is all about cars.

I am a person who drives in much the same capacity as the cast of the F&F series, so I was more attuned to the nuances of how and how not to drive. As such, I will point out a few inaccuracies that the film's writers and director failed to catch, so you don't have to:

-the characters in the film, most notably Vin Diesel, would not be that cool in real life, as they would inevitably be hardened by the harsh reality of the profession.

-anyone in law enforcement who places so little care in the words of the law, as Walker does, would certainly not be promoted to the FBI, but rather the government would kill him and stick his body 6 feet deep and blame it on some crazy methhead. I know this because that's what they blamed my sister-in-law's death on, and I know that's not how it happened.

-characters riddled by vengeance, as Diesel was, would not have the wit to deliver such crushing one-liners that he does.

-when engaging in the previously mentioned automotive felonies, the driver and passengers do not, by any extension of reality, listen to reggaeton music. It is because of this movie that I find that the genre is by far the most annoying, perverse, and utterly worthless musical genre in existence.

-in other words, I wish the film honored the reality of what it means to be on the streets going way over the speed limit with a bunch of drugs in the trunk.

Though not always realistic in the automotive regard, at a certain point the film departs from an automotive focus and leads the viewer into a more believable view of love and loss.

My theory for why this detour occurs is that the writer of the film, Chris Morgan, was in the throws of a schizophrenic episode in which he thought it a good idea to combine the plots of Herbie and Casablanca. On paper it seems like a good idea, but the celluloid reality is much, much less appealing.

I can only hope that someday, somehow, someone is able to better combine the aforementioned cinematic masterpieces in a more constructive and entertaining way. If done correctly, I smell a best picture ever winner.

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Contact the author: pmckeown@llamaledger.com

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