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Fast and the Furious, The (HD DVD)
Universal // PG-13 // September 26, 2006 // Region 0
List Price: $29.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
So anyway, The Fast and the Furious is Point Break with rice rockets. Swap out Keanu Reeves for Paul Walker, Patrick Swayze for Vin Diesel, and Lori Petty for Jordana Brewster (definitely trading up there), have the undercover cop investigating truck heists instead of bank robberies, toss in a bunch of CGI, stir vigorously, and out pops The Fast and the Furious. Yup, Undercover Cop tries to get in tight 
with the gang of bad guys, there's one member of the gang who sniffs out something wrong with our Melba toast hero that everyone else ignores, the cop falls for a girl close to his new pal-slash-secret-arch-nemesis...you know the drill. If you don't, turn on Encore Action and wait a couple hours.
Wicked script? Hell yeah. Rob Cohen, the Michael Bay for the twenty-aughts, behind the camera? Check. Amazing cast? You know it. Picture Paul Walker's character from She's All That talking about cars and you've nailed Brian O'Conner. Michelle Rodriguez checks in with the same scowl and monotone tough-chick bravado that would later have Lost fans painting a target on her back. Jordana Brewster's just supposed to stand around and look pretty, and stand around and look pretty she does. Only Vin Diesel manages to leave any real impression, but it's such an inspired casting choice that he makes everyone around him seem less boring. Yeah, some of the races manage to be exciting even with the cartoonishly over-the-top CGI and ridiculously fluid camerawork, but there are fewer than you'd probably think, and Vinny's the main reason this otherwise disposable, forgettable movie raked in so much cash at the box office. The Fast and the Furious is a tired retread of a bunch of stock formulas, and just because the clichés have been buffed to a glossy sheen doesn't make the movie any more worth seeing.
Video: Half the reviews of the original The Fast and the Furious DVD were peppered with the phrase "reference quality". When a high-definition release followed on the stillborn D-VHS format, again, you'd spot "reference quality" in nearly every write-up and home theater message board post. Nothing seems to have changed for this 2.39:1 HD DVD release, and it certainly ranks in the top tier of releases on the format to date. Although there is some small measure of grain in a few sunny exteriors, this could almost pass as a completely digital production; there's not a speck or even the slightest hint of wear to be found. The neon paint jobs scream, rendered as beautifully as anything that garish can, and as orange as its fleshtones can be, that sort of exaggeration fits the movie's visual style. Despite brief hints of softness, the level of depth and detail are both exceptional, and fine textures are recreated without any distortion or Moiré patterns. The boost in resolution enhances flaws in some of the slightly dated CGI work and this really isn't what I'd point to as my favorite style of cinematography, but viewed strictly from a "can I use this to show off my $8,000 home theater rig?" perspective, the answer's "yup".
Audio: Well, it's loud. Universal's
opted against a lossless TrueHD track, but this Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 mix is aggressive and bombastic enough to satify any reasonable home theater nut. The audio is unrelenting, teeming with pans across every channel and overflowing with strong imaging and discrete effects. It's an exceptionally immersive mix, and the gunfire, electronic-heavy score, and vehicular chaos summon a hellish amount of bass from the subwoofer. As dynamic and thunderous as this soundtrack can be, dialogue emerges without any concerns (well, aside from the shitty writing and acting). There are also Dolby Digital Plus dubs and subtitles in Spanish and French along with English subtitles for the hearing impaired.
Supplements: This HD DVD of The Fast and the Furious does toss something new into the fray: a newly-recorded video commentary with director Rob Cohen. A small picture-in-picture window appears in the lower right hand corner of the screen for the entire movie, typically showing Cohen as he's speaking but sporadically tossing in outtakes and snippets of other behind-the-scenes footage. On one hand, I like this approach more than what Warner has done with some of their In-Movie Experiences just because it's constantly running rather than punctuating particular scenes. Then again, much of what Cohen says has already been covered elsewhere on the disc, and like the original commentary, he spends a lot of time describing what's happening on-screen. The techno-slash-hip-hop-inflected score and the louder action sequences drown out what Cohen is saying far too often, and with "commentary" being the operative word in "video commentary" and all, the whole thing's kind of a waste if you can't make out what the director's saying. I like the idea (and it's always nice to have a filmmaker vocally support the new HD home video formats), just not how it's been pulled off on this disc.
There are plenty of other extras to wile away your weekend if you give the Instant Access feature a pass. For one, there's the commentary from the original
disc. It's heavy on praise and unnecessary narration, and some viewers may feel the need to mash the "stop" button when one of Cohen's first comments compares the opening heist to John Ford's Stagecoach. Cohen's a chatty enough guy to not have any problem filling a feature-length audio commentary, and it really is a decent track overall and by far the most comprehensive of the disc's extras. Although the commentary has an "Enhanced Viewing" feature that'll optionally shift to related clips whenever a rimmed wheel appears on-screen, it's clunky and dated enough that I'd pass on that aspect.
The 17 minute making-of featurette is your usual promotional piece, devoting around a third of its runtime to street racing (take a shot everytime someone says "youth culture") and spending the rest with obligatory clips from the movie, the cast describing their characters, and all the other HBO First Look mainstays. Playboy's 2002 Playmate of the Year Dalene Kurtis bends over a lot as The Fast and the Furious technical advisor Craig Lieberman shows her the ins and outs (lame pun intended, sadly) of "Trickin' Out a Hot Import Car" (19 minutes). The third and final featurette is a four and a half minute fly-on-the-wall clip of trimming down the graphic shots of a near-severed arm to make sure the movie landed its PG-13 rating.
Since The Fast and the Furious is kind of a dumb eye-candy movie, its visuals get a few extras of their own. A four minute featurette documents how some of these shots were conceived and assembled through a montage of storyboards, rough renders, and blue screens. A "Movie Magic Interactive Special Effects" feature lets viewers see a brief shot from the final chase from different angles and from various stages of production. The last of the effects-centric extras is footage of a particularly impressive crash from eight different cameras. As short as they are, these are by far my favorite extras on this HD DVD.
Six minutes and change of deleted/extended scenes mostly tack a little more dialogue onto the movie. These eight low-res clips can be viewed individually or all
at once, and Rob Cohen offers optional audio commentary explaining why they were trimmed out of the film. Pacing/talky/time, to save you a click. There are also three music videos: Ja Rule's "Furious", Caddillac Tah's "POV City Hustler", and Saliva's "Click Click Boom". Last to bat are a letterboxed trailer and a 'prelude' for 2 Fast 2 Furious, both presented in kinda lousy non-anamorphic widescreen.
The constant disclaimers before many of the extras can get to be a real pain, and in the "Trickin' Out..." clip, the same disclaimer cycles a second time, taking 45 seconds (!) for the featurette to actually begin. I guess the Paul Walker "drive safe, kids!" PSA wasn't enough for Universal's legal eagles.
Conclusion: I wasted eighteen bucks on the original The Fast and the Furious DVD just because so many reviews kept tossing out the phrase "reference quality", so I don't want to be that guy now that I'm the one writing the review. Yeah, this HD DVD sounds nice, it looks even better, and there are scores of extras, but...the movie just barely inches past "tolerable". The Fast and the Furious definitely has its fans (otherwise there wouldn't be two sequels), and if you know what you're getting into, the new video commentary and beefed-up high definition video may be worth the asking price. For the uninitiated, I'd suggest sticking with a rental or passing entirely.
Disclaimer in tiny text: the screengrabs in this review were lifted from the DVD and are just supposed to make the layout look a little less boring.
with the gang of bad guys, there's one member of the gang who sniffs out something wrong with our Melba toast hero that everyone else ignores, the cop falls for a girl close to his new pal-slash-secret-arch-nemesis...you know the drill. If you don't, turn on Encore Action and wait a couple hours. Wicked script? Hell yeah. Rob Cohen, the Michael Bay for the twenty-aughts, behind the camera? Check. Amazing cast? You know it. Picture Paul Walker's character from She's All That talking about cars and you've nailed Brian O'Conner. Michelle Rodriguez checks in with the same scowl and monotone tough-chick bravado that would later have Lost fans painting a target on her back. Jordana Brewster's just supposed to stand around and look pretty, and stand around and look pretty she does. Only Vin Diesel manages to leave any real impression, but it's such an inspired casting choice that he makes everyone around him seem less boring. Yeah, some of the races manage to be exciting even with the cartoonishly over-the-top CGI and ridiculously fluid camerawork, but there are fewer than you'd probably think, and Vinny's the main reason this otherwise disposable, forgettable movie raked in so much cash at the box office. The Fast and the Furious is a tired retread of a bunch of stock formulas, and just because the clichés have been buffed to a glossy sheen doesn't make the movie any more worth seeing.
Video: Half the reviews of the original The Fast and the Furious DVD were peppered with the phrase "reference quality". When a high-definition release followed on the stillborn D-VHS format, again, you'd spot "reference quality" in nearly every write-up and home theater message board post. Nothing seems to have changed for this 2.39:1 HD DVD release, and it certainly ranks in the top tier of releases on the format to date. Although there is some small measure of grain in a few sunny exteriors, this could almost pass as a completely digital production; there's not a speck or even the slightest hint of wear to be found. The neon paint jobs scream, rendered as beautifully as anything that garish can, and as orange as its fleshtones can be, that sort of exaggeration fits the movie's visual style. Despite brief hints of softness, the level of depth and detail are both exceptional, and fine textures are recreated without any distortion or Moiré patterns. The boost in resolution enhances flaws in some of the slightly dated CGI work and this really isn't what I'd point to as my favorite style of cinematography, but viewed strictly from a "can I use this to show off my $8,000 home theater rig?" perspective, the answer's "yup".
Audio: Well, it's loud. Universal's
opted against a lossless TrueHD track, but this Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 mix is aggressive and bombastic enough to satify any reasonable home theater nut. The audio is unrelenting, teeming with pans across every channel and overflowing with strong imaging and discrete effects. It's an exceptionally immersive mix, and the gunfire, electronic-heavy score, and vehicular chaos summon a hellish amount of bass from the subwoofer. As dynamic and thunderous as this soundtrack can be, dialogue emerges without any concerns (well, aside from the shitty writing and acting). There are also Dolby Digital Plus dubs and subtitles in Spanish and French along with English subtitles for the hearing impaired. Supplements: This HD DVD of The Fast and the Furious does toss something new into the fray: a newly-recorded video commentary with director Rob Cohen. A small picture-in-picture window appears in the lower right hand corner of the screen for the entire movie, typically showing Cohen as he's speaking but sporadically tossing in outtakes and snippets of other behind-the-scenes footage. On one hand, I like this approach more than what Warner has done with some of their In-Movie Experiences just because it's constantly running rather than punctuating particular scenes. Then again, much of what Cohen says has already been covered elsewhere on the disc, and like the original commentary, he spends a lot of time describing what's happening on-screen. The techno-slash-hip-hop-inflected score and the louder action sequences drown out what Cohen is saying far too often, and with "commentary" being the operative word in "video commentary" and all, the whole thing's kind of a waste if you can't make out what the director's saying. I like the idea (and it's always nice to have a filmmaker vocally support the new HD home video formats), just not how it's been pulled off on this disc.
There are plenty of other extras to wile away your weekend if you give the Instant Access feature a pass. For one, there's the commentary from the original
disc. It's heavy on praise and unnecessary narration, and some viewers may feel the need to mash the "stop" button when one of Cohen's first comments compares the opening heist to John Ford's Stagecoach. Cohen's a chatty enough guy to not have any problem filling a feature-length audio commentary, and it really is a decent track overall and by far the most comprehensive of the disc's extras. Although the commentary has an "Enhanced Viewing" feature that'll optionally shift to related clips whenever a rimmed wheel appears on-screen, it's clunky and dated enough that I'd pass on that aspect. The 17 minute making-of featurette is your usual promotional piece, devoting around a third of its runtime to street racing (take a shot everytime someone says "youth culture") and spending the rest with obligatory clips from the movie, the cast describing their characters, and all the other HBO First Look mainstays. Playboy's 2002 Playmate of the Year Dalene Kurtis bends over a lot as The Fast and the Furious technical advisor Craig Lieberman shows her the ins and outs (lame pun intended, sadly) of "Trickin' Out a Hot Import Car" (19 minutes). The third and final featurette is a four and a half minute fly-on-the-wall clip of trimming down the graphic shots of a near-severed arm to make sure the movie landed its PG-13 rating.
Since The Fast and the Furious is kind of a dumb eye-candy movie, its visuals get a few extras of their own. A four minute featurette documents how some of these shots were conceived and assembled through a montage of storyboards, rough renders, and blue screens. A "Movie Magic Interactive Special Effects" feature lets viewers see a brief shot from the final chase from different angles and from various stages of production. The last of the effects-centric extras is footage of a particularly impressive crash from eight different cameras. As short as they are, these are by far my favorite extras on this HD DVD.
Six minutes and change of deleted/extended scenes mostly tack a little more dialogue onto the movie. These eight low-res clips can be viewed individually or all
at once, and Rob Cohen offers optional audio commentary explaining why they were trimmed out of the film. Pacing/talky/time, to save you a click. There are also three music videos: Ja Rule's "Furious", Caddillac Tah's "POV City Hustler", and Saliva's "Click Click Boom". Last to bat are a letterboxed trailer and a 'prelude' for 2 Fast 2 Furious, both presented in kinda lousy non-anamorphic widescreen. The constant disclaimers before many of the extras can get to be a real pain, and in the "Trickin' Out..." clip, the same disclaimer cycles a second time, taking 45 seconds (!) for the featurette to actually begin. I guess the Paul Walker "drive safe, kids!" PSA wasn't enough for Universal's legal eagles.
Conclusion: I wasted eighteen bucks on the original The Fast and the Furious DVD just because so many reviews kept tossing out the phrase "reference quality", so I don't want to be that guy now that I'm the one writing the review. Yeah, this HD DVD sounds nice, it looks even better, and there are scores of extras, but...the movie just barely inches past "tolerable". The Fast and the Furious definitely has its fans (otherwise there wouldn't be two sequels), and if you know what you're getting into, the new video commentary and beefed-up high definition video may be worth the asking price. For the uninitiated, I'd suggest sticking with a rental or passing entirely.
Disclaimer in tiny text: the screengrabs in this review were lifted from the DVD and are just supposed to make the layout look a little less boring.
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