Ranking The ‘Fast And Furious’ Franchise Films From Best To Worst

This weekend sees the sixth (!) film in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, “Fast and Furious 6” (or, according to director Justin Lin, just “Furious Six“) race into theaters. Once thought of as a kind of also-ran franchise in the Universal canon, it has quickly become one of the studio’s most important properties, with each subsequent film getting bigger and more bombastic (if not genuinely better). Sure, these movies might not be high art but they are consistently entertaining in a way that few Hollywood franchises are, full of muscle cars and beautiful women and tough guys who pummel each other just for the heck of it. We’ve already run our official review of “Fast & Furious 6,” but in the spirit of the series, we thought we would run down every entry in the entire franchise, from worst to best. So put on your tiniest muscle shirt, grab that energy drink, and buckle up.

6. “2 Fast 2 Furious” (John Singleton, 2003)
Already it seemed like the franchise was running out of gas, when John Singleton took over for Rob Cohen (the original film had revitalized his flagging career), and Vin Diesel instead chose the tent-pole non-starter “XXX” (about an extreme sports-loving secret agent) over the sequel. This entry swapped Southern California for Miami and saw Singleton, already an underappreciated stylist, go fucking HAM. The original’s over-the-top stylistic flourishes like the zooming-through-the-engine shots are nothing compared to what Singleton employs – single tracking shots that zoom between each car, shots of just the drivers’ eyes (a cue quoted verbatim from old episodes of “Speed Racer“), and the “warp speed” gag from the first movie pushed to delirious, almost psychedelic heights. All of this has the cumulative effect of leaving the whole thing feel more like “Mario Kart” than “Vanishing Point.” The elasticity of the physical “Fast and Furious” universe was being pushed further, with an opening sequence involving a group of racers jumping across a drawbridge that is being raised. The fun of “2 Fast 2 Furious” is somewhat undermined by the lack of original cast members and original plotting (thieves are replaced by drug runners and that’s about the only difference in terms of narrative), feeling the most like an unnecessary cash grab in a film series designed to feel like unnecessary cash grabs. Perhaps the movie is most notable for introducing the characters played by Tyrese and Ludacris, who would become major players in subsequent films and intrinsic pieces of the “Fast and Furious” mythology (as it were).

5. “Fast & Furious” (Justin Lin, 2009)
Unfortunately, the first film to reunite the original “Fast and the Furious” cast (the title was shortened and an ampersand added, presumably for variety’s sake?) is also one of the more awkward entries, a weird in-between movie that’s got to set up a bunch of things and find a way to reunite the characters in an organic way, but instead comes across about as subtly as two super-charged cars smashing into each other going 100 miles per hour. Dominic Toretto’s lover, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is murdered (or so it seems), which leads him back into the United States to try and solve the murder and get revenge. The best part of “Fast and Furious” is a prologue set in the Dominic Republic with Dom and his crew hijacking a fuel tanker that’s like something out of one of the “Mad Max” movies. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) is hunting a drug boss that has a connection to Letty’s murder – do you think these old friends and rivals will cross paths? Possibly while performing some illegal street racing? While Justin Lin shows much of the same ingenuity and exuberance that was present in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (the GPS-aided race is a really nice touch), this kind of narrative, a holdover from the first two films, feels like it has hit a patch of rough road, leading to the abrupt (and wholly welcome) tonal shift of “Fast Five.” Even though the events of “Fast & Furious” ripple out into the other parts of Lin’s little mini-trilogy, it’s probably the least essential entry, besides the second installment.

4. “The Fast and the Furious” (Rob Cohen, 2001)
Well, this is the one that started it all. For better or worse. The title was borrowed from an old American International Pictures B-movie and the plot was lifted wholesale from “Point Break,” with a plucky cop (Paul Walker, with frosted-tips farm-boy good looks and limited acting ability) going undercover to bust some criminals who take part in underground street racing (led by Vin Diesel, equal parts charisma and muscles). Until ‘Tokyo Drift,’ this is the entry that was most engaged with the culture behind the illegal streetracing, which lends a certain amount of realism to a movie otherwise defined by huge leaps in logic and gang members that wouldn’t be out of place in
some millennial remake of “The Warriors.” It was based, in part, on a Vibe article called “Racer X” by Ken Li that chronicled illegal street-racing in New York City. So far none of the movies have been based, in part or whole, in the Big Apple. Compared to the other movies, it’s pretty leisurely paced (director Rob Cohen is fond of long, glacial establishing shots that sometimes aimlessly survey an entire city), and way more comic book-y than you probably remember (there are moments where the world outside literally bends around the car like they’re going into warp drive). It is also hopelessly dated– yes, that’s a Limp Bizkit song on the soundtrack, and Ja Rule in the cast, and at one point Jordana Brewster flirts while seductively sipping a Snapple. The almost painfully awful script allows for some philosophical pontificating on the part of Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, with things like,
“it don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile – winning’s winning” and “I live my life a quarter mile at a time.” Deep stuff. But of course the thing that really matters are the races – this is easily the most
race-centered entry in the entire franchise, with the most memorable moment probably be the sequence involving an eighteen-wheel truck and a jellybean-sized sports car zipping underneath it. In this moment, the physical reality of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, where actual physics is only loosely considered, was born.

3. “Furious Six” (Justin Lin, 2013)
Picking up where “Fast Five” left off, “Furious Six” (and that is the intended title, as far as Justin Lin is concerned) is even more wildly over-the-top, yet still deeply concerned with the notions of
family and togetherness reinforced by the last film. It’s an interesting interplay that Lin has come up with – trying to deepen the emotional stakes while raising the bar on the action sequences – and “Furious Six” mostly purrs like a kitten (what? We’re running low on car metaphors). Instead of Rio, the gang reassembles in London, in order to help Hobbs (Johnson) track down ruthless villain Shaw (Luke Evans), who uses street racing to pull elaborate, potentially dangerous jobs (he’s assembling a bomb or something). One of the wheelmen assisting Shaw is actually Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who seemingly died a couple of movies ago. (But not really!) While “Furious Six” doesn’t quite leave
the impression “Fast Five” did, it’s still wonderfully entertaining and has a bittersweet edge, as well, since you can feel that Lin’s trilogy is coming to a close (complete with montage-y title sequence — the director’s departing for greener pastures, with James Wan taking over next time). There are two action sequences that are probably better than anything in the entire franchise – one involves a tank and a chase on an elevated highway; the other (which Lin told us he had been planning since 2009)
involves a plane. That’s all we’ll say. Walker continues to be a drab buzz-kill with his sub-plot, which sees a couple of “Fast & Furious” characters returning for no reason, and proves to be a low-point. But for the most part, “Furious Six” is a blast, with Lin ballooning the cast with actors from two of the best action movies in recent memory – “Haywire” (Gina Carano) and “The Raid” (Joe Taslim). It just would have been nice to find a place for Eva Mendes‘ character, who appeared in the post-credits bumper during “Fast Five” but sadly doesn’t return. Maybe most impressive is the fact that
“Furious Six” makes amends for the weird chronology of the series (Sung Kang, a character both introduced and killed in the third movie, has been alive and well in four on). Goodbye Justin Lin. Nobody revved our engines quite like you did.

2. “Fast Five” (Justin Lin, 2001)

“Fast & Furious” showed some signs of engine trouble, so director Justin Lin took it into the shop and dramatically retooled the entire franchise. “Fast Five” shifts into high gear and is wholly unlike any other entry in series – it picks up fifteen seconds after the last film ended, with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) getting bussed to prison, and subsequently rescued by his partners-in-crime (which now
include Paul Walker’s former goodie two-shoes Brian O’Connor). The fact that the previous film ended on a cliffhanger tells you that at least Lin had confidence in his inner-series trilogy-building, and “Fast Five” takes things even further – instead of a cops-and-robbers story, it’s an all-out heist film, with a number of satellite characters from earlier entries in the series (Ludacris, Tyrese, Matt Schulze, even Sung Kang from ‘Tokyo Drift’) and, most impressively, a new heavy in the form of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson‘s Diplomatic Security Service agent Hobbs (because honestly there weren’t enough ethnically nebulous beefcakes in this series already). Our characters, now fugitives from the law, are hiding out in Rio de Janeiro. Old habits die hard, of course, and after a botched job
involving stealing cars from a moving train (one of the most breathless action sequences in a movie overstuffed with them), they’re slowly pulled into a scheme to rob a bank from a corrupt businessman, which turns the movie into a kind of “Ocean’s Eleven“-with-muscle cars. It was kind of a dodgy gamble, but one that is pulled off incredibly well, with virtuoso set piece after virtuoso set piece, culminating in a climax where they drag a bank vault down the crowded streets of Rio de Janeiro (just typing that sentence made me feel really awesome and manly). Thematically, “Fast Five” reinforces the notion that the series has always been about family and it’s a testament to Lin’s skill as a director (and Chris Morgan‘s nimble script) that he was able to pull together all of the threads from the franchise into one concise package, all while fundamentally altering the series’ DNA.

1. “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (Justin Lin, 2006)
After the tepid response to initial sequel “2 Fast 2 Furious,” it looked like the franchise had all but been marked for the scrap heap, with a “spin-off” movie, divorced from the previous films’ continuity and respective casts, and saddled with an unwieldy title, seemingly one step above direct-to-video sequels-in-name-only like “American Pie: Band Camp.” In truth, ‘Tokyo Drift,’ freed from the cops-and-criminals conventions of the original two films and emboldened by a stylistic adventurousness, ended up the highlight of the entire franchise and maybe the only truly “great” movie in the series. One of the best decisions in a movie made almost exclusively of them was having the movie centered around high school kids instead of boring young adult types, which lends the whole thing an “American Graffiti“-with-yakuza-bosses vibe. The plot concerns a troubled high school kid (Lucas Black, continuing the series’ tradition of bland-as-milk white guy leading
men), who is prone to dangerous street racing and given a choice: he can either go to juvenile hall, or be shipped off to live with his absentee father in Japan. He chooses the latter. The audience, like the
character, is introduced to the underground world of “drifting” – a Tokyo phenomenon where the cars are driven incredibly fast and then the emergency brake is pulled, causing the car to seize and “drift” around tight corners (unlike in America, there isn’t a whole lot of room to race cars in Japan). Director Justin Lin, who had grown weary of the increasingly computer-generated nature of the previous films, decided to do as much of the movie with real cars as he possibly could, with only
minor computer-generated embellishments (like the moment the camera gets behind the bumper of a car and the wall of a parking garage, to dramatize just how close they come). Lin had a clear vision for
where the franchise would need to go and how it would get there, and he executes it brilliantly – everything from the choice of music (the theme song is done by Japanese art-rap stars Teriyaki Boyz), to the casting (Sonny Chiba shows up as a yakuza boss), to the races, which seem like something of an afterthought. That’s not a knock – it’s just that everything else about “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift” is so vibrant and alive that even cars going 100 miles-per-hour down crowded Japanese streets can’t quite compete. The fact that Diesel makes a cameo at the end proved that the franchise was, indeed, still very much viable – and what’s more, it was about to hit its nitrous booster and really kick into high gear, at least as far as box office goes.

Thankfully just because Justin Lin (who is sort of like the David Yates of the “Fast and Furious” franchise) has left doesn’t mean that the series is over – next summer will see the release of “Fast and Furious 7,” this time helmed by “Saw” director James Wan (who we understand wants to bring a seventies chase movie vibe to the project). It’s got a big-time action star as the villain (we can’t reveal who, just yet – remember to stay through the credits to find out) and a series of international locales. Ladies and gentlemen… start your engines! The seventh installment vrooms into theaters July 11^th, 2014.