4. Brian and Dom Physics-Defying Cliff Jump – “Fast Five”
Looking back, “Fast Five” feels like a turning point: a juncture where the creators of these movies said, “To hell with credibility, logic, and science, let’s just make this shit look cool.” In that regard, the rather excellent “Fast Five” wastes no time letting viewers know where the filmmakers stand on the issue of shit looking cool. We essentially pick up right where the previous film, 2009’s “Fast & Furious,” left off: shortly after freeing Dom from a prison-bound transit bus, Brian, and Mia have decided that they want to steal three luxury cars from a freight train. This high-stakes business leads to one of the most impressively bananas set pieces to ever feature in a “Fast” movie: one that’s filled with trucks smashing into train cars, a smattering of one-liners, and plenty of fire, shrapnel, and screeching tires. But that’s not even where it gets nuts: no, what we’re referring to involves Brian and Dom narrowly cheating death for the millionth time by jumping from a staggeringly high cliffside. Well, it would be more accurate to say that they, uh, drive a car straight off said cliffside, and just… sort of float in mid-air for what feels like an eternity before landing in the water below without a scratch. Imagine the “aim for the bushes” scene from “The Other Guys,” but not intentionally funny, and with a far less tragic outcome.
3. The Entire, Icy Ending Of… – “The Fate of The Furious”
The crazed grand finale of F. Gary Gray’s “The Fate Of The Furious” applies an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach: even for a “Fast” movie, this one is wild. Here, Dom and the crew find themselves in the snow-swept region of Vladovin, Russia, and because this is around the point in the “Fast” film chronology where the movies themselves started to feel slightly top-heavy, a LOT is going on (Hobbs still has an ax to grind with Dom, Dom’s still under the thumb of Cypher, Scott Eastwood wants to earn his stripes as Paul Walker 2.0, etc.), even before the many exploding balls of flame enter the picture; it should also be mentioned that Deckard Shaw’s “rescue-Dom’s-baby” mission is happening in conjunction with these aforementioned events. Really, there’s almost too much insanity at play here – Dom burning rubber in the name of his progeny, Hobbs shouting, “It’s a goddamn heat-seeker comin’ at us,” the LOL-worthy nuclear submarine bit – but nothing beats the chef’s kiss of a moment wherein a ring of cars, each driven by a member of Dom’s crew, form a protective ring around their leader to shield him from a blazing inferno. If that’s not the ultimate testament to brotherhood in an entire series founded on just that, then I don’t know what is.
2. “Cars Don’t Fly” – “Furious 7”
By the time Dom and the gang have arrived in the gilded, aristocratic alternate reality of modern-day Abu Dhabi in the completely wackadoodle “Furious 7” – at the behest of Kurt Russell’s enigmatic Mr. Nobody, of course, to capture and obtain something known as “God’s Eye” – these movies had long stopped operating in the realm of what you or I might call “reality.” Still, even by the elastic standards of what’s quote-unquote “plausible” or even “possible” in the “Fast”-verse, the high point of James Wan’s giddily madcap seventh installment is a certifiable doozy. Brian and Dom are spearheading a mission to infiltrate a billionaire’s gala to—get this— fetch a coveted flash drive, which naturally leads to the two knuckleheaded bros engaging in a death-defying indoor chase before literally proceeding to crash a stolen ride through the 50th floor of the absolutely colossal Etihad Towers, all before landing—you guessed it, inside the adjacent neighboring tower. No, really. “Cars don’t fly,” so sayeth Brian to Dom. One of the many beautiful things about this franchise is that they can. You just gotta believe.
1. Longest Runway In Existence – “Fast & Furious 6”
It’s a running joke between hardcore “Fast and Furious” fans, one that we’re still no closer to answering in 2021: exactly how long is the seemingly never-ending runway that serves as an integral ingredient in the explosive finale of “Fast & Furious 6?” The answer is: it is endless, limitless, seemingly without temporal or physical borders, stretching outward into the vast expanse of time itself, which is really all the better for Dom, Letty, Brian and company to run the down dastardly Brit, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans, the Tiger Woods of playing dastardly Brits), as he attempts a brazen nighttime escape on an Antonov An-124 Ruslan aircraft. There are entire, intricate Youtube breakdowns devoted to how long this goddamn runway is. It’s telling that in a franchise that all but spits in the face of rationality, that this goofy logistical gap stands out as perhaps the most purely ridiculous thing to ever occur in a “Fast and Furious” movie (and remember, this is a series where Dwayne Johnson stops a moving missile with nothing but his bare hands). Did we mention that, as the runway chase is nearing its climax, Dom performs what can only be described as a flying head-butt to save his BFF Brian from one of Shaw’s goons? That’s what we call protecting your family, baby.
“F9” will hit theaters around the world on June 25th.
