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This week, on Really Large Men Who Drive Cars Really Fast:
We’re celebrating our 1st anniversary with the turbo-charged, melodrama-soaked, gravity-defying classic that redefined what a Great Bad Movie truly is. Fast Five is the Citizen Kane of car-based heist movies.
We saved this one for a special occasion, because Fast Five isn’t just any movie — it’s a beautifully chaotic mix of telenovela-level emotional showdowns, dialogue that sounds philosophical but means almost nothing, and incredible action sequences with things you’ve never seen before. Is it absurd? Absolutely. Is it brilliant? Unquestionably. Is it a little bad? Ummmmmm, all we can say is we love every second of it.
Come celebrate with us as we toast to one year of great cinematic achievements, and honor the film that somehow made dragging a vault through Rio with two Dodge Chargers look cooler than it has any right to.
Joe’s Back of the Box
Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) are on the run from the law and the most violent criminals in Brazil. Instead of laying low, they plan the biggest heist of their careers so that they can retire to a beach somewhere in the sun. The twists and turns will have you guessing all the way up the shocking final scene. The film goes into overdrive to and pushes the pedal to the meddle tight action scenes ravaging the city… Who will be left standing and who will fall by the wayside?
The REAL Back of the Box
This is the best of the Fast and Furious movies. Period, stop. It is ridiculous in all the ways you would expect but the stakes also feel raised and attainable. Utilizing the time honored trope of getting the band back together, Fast Five is a perfect action movie and it should be revered more than it is… Trust us, this is pure fun and no thought, all gas and no brake, all NOS and no Nitro….
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Joe: Greg in the movie we just watched, they famously get the band back together again. As someone who was in a band, what are your thoughts about getting in your actual band back together again?
Greg: I think to get the band back together, we would just need our standard writer green M&Ms only. Okay, a box of Twix.
Joe: All right. It’s pretty easy so far. A table length of cocaine. Oh. All right. And just got interesting. Yeah.
Greg: And everything after that on the list is also illegal, so it’s pretty easy.
Joe: Yeah. Pretty easy. Touring with Motley Crew and like, 1986.
Greg: And it’s a simple 30 step process, Joe.
Joe: Yeah. Okay.
Greg: Now, our rider was actually chips and salsa and orange juice, and we were such a small band that nobody ever actually read our rider. Like, no venue ever gave us our rider. But whenever we played like a college, they would. And it became an inside joke for us. Like, why is it every time we play a college, there’s chips and salsa?
Greg: That’s hilarious. And then we realized, oh my gosh, that’s what we put on a rider like three years ago and we forgot about it.
Joe: That’s so awesome.
Greg: All right, let’s let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: So I see you’ve all met.
Clip: What’s this all about? Yeah, man. Why you drag us halfway around the world? Because we got a job. That’s a stealth mission. We’ll be in and out before they even know you’re there. We’re talking about breaking into a police station. This is crazy. This is $100 million. You said what? I’m down.
Clip: Is all this really necessary to apprehend wing?
Clip: One’s a former federal officer who spent five years in deep cover. The other one’s a professional criminal. Escaped prison twice. And above all else, we don’t ever, ever let them get into cars.
Greg: In the year 2011. April 29th is when Justin Lin stepped up to the plate and decided to make a movie that could only be celebrated on our one year anniversary of great bad movies. It was time for Fast five. We are getting the whole gang back together on this one. Vin Diesel we’re talking about Paul Walker, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Matt Schultz, Sun Kang, Gal Gadot, Don Omar Santos we’ve got Elsa Pataky as Elena, we’ve got Tego Calderon.
Greg: We of course have Chris Morgan writing again. There’s so much to talk about. Joe Skye Tucker on our one year anniversary of Great Bad movies, we decided to go to one of the best. What makes Fast Five a great bad movie?
Joe: I feel like Fast five is the ultimate great bad movie 100%. If someone asked like, what movie should I watch? That is emblematic of what is a great bad movie? It was a fast five. It is, and I think I can speak for you on this. It is our favorite Fast and Furious movie. We are in the tank for this franchise.
Joe: Having seen all of them at one point, I watched them in chronological order, moving things around so that you could kind of get the full pastiche of the Fast and Furious averse. And then you have this really as 4 or 5 and six. So four sets the table for the new tone direction of the franchise. Yeah, kind of a languishing B-movie.
Joe: Oh, they’re just going to churn out the same kind of movie, but it really took it in a different direction. Yeah. This does what you want your sequel to do. It just amps up the action. At the time, things I had never seen before has one of the best ending car chases I’ve ever seen. One of those moments where I was watching it and questioning like there’s no way that they could do this, that that would actually happen.
Joe: And then I had a moment and I had to talk to my wife. I was like you’re watching fast five. Yeah. Just enjoy it. And as soon as I did that, it was the most enjoyable thing in the world. You have ridiculous plot points happening left and right. You have them able to get the gang back together instantaneously.
Greg: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hobbs and Shaw, travel logic going on for the whole gang.
Joe: All over the place. You have continuity errors left and right. Sure. You have the world’s worst fake baby bump at the end. Finishing strong. Yeah. Finishing strong. And you just have a great great action movie. Yeah. Start to finish. It starts strong and ends strong. It’s like a comfort movie. And I think I literally watch this the first time on a Saturday afternoon.
Joe: Like that’s kind of our, our barometer of like if you’re watching and you’re flipping through the channels. Yeah. At a pre all the streaming stuff. Sure. There was. Okay. I haven’t seen it. Sure. And then it just sucks you in and that’s to me a perfect movie. So I have a lot more I can say about this, but I will turn it over to you.
Joe: Yeah. Greg swineherd, why is Fast five a great bad movie?
Greg: Oh my gosh. When we did our Fast and Furious episode, which we probably need to explain, is the fourth Fast and Furious movie. Also, it was our second episode little less than a year ago on this on this podcast. I discovered that kind of after it had been released on video. You know, I watched it at my house.
Greg: I was just going to watch a little bit of it and then go to bed, and I stayed up until the middle of the night because it was just a total revelation. I just did not know that people were making movies like this for me anymore. And so when this movie came out, I’d been screaming from the rooftops about fast four to everyone and anyone that would listen to me.
Greg: So when this movie was announced, I got so many texts from friends like, we’re going to see that, right? So I saw this movie so many times in theater because everybody I knew was like, well, I got to go see that. And each time it was just like, well, it has to be downhill from here. I don’t see how we beat this.
Greg: And Justin Lin completely sold me in the fourth one. I hadn’t seen the third one yet, but the third one is solid as well. He directed that coming back for the fifth. They’ve got a slightly larger budget where it like 125 million on this one. Vin diesel has become almost full caricature of Vin Diesel.
Joe: Not quite. Not quite. Yeah. Almost.
Greg: He’s showing a little bit more emotion in this movie than he does in the later ones. And it’s almost more hilarious because of it. Like wow he is just really happy in this one scene and we don’t know why. He’s just smiling a lot. And so his choices are not small ones. They are very noticeable.
Joe: Yeah, subtlety is not his strength as an actor.
Greg: Right, right. Yeah. When I was watching this movie, I was so blown away by what Justin Lin had made. Gosh, it has the best action scenes. There’s so much happening practically in this movie. And that really is different than especially like seven and eight and nine.
Joe: And ten.
Greg: And yeah, in ten. So this really is the top of the mountain for this series. And so from the very beginning I was entirely on board. We have to listen to the opening of this movie. I’m obsessed with how movies opened just when the studio logos are showing. We did a little bit of this on Monkey Man two, but we talk about cinematic booms on the show.
Greg: We use them every time we, you know, change the section in the show, listen to how many booms happen in the opening of this movie. Here we go.
Clip: Dominic Toretto gosh, you are hereby sentenced to serve 25 years to life at the Lompoc Maximum Security Prison System without the possibility of early parole.
Joe: For eight and nine.
Greg: Bigger, bigger. Keep it going. And then? And then the cars show up, and that’s what they stop. Just like, boom. After.
Joe: Boom after that.
Greg: I don’t think in 2011 I understood. Oh, that’s the audio signal cue for Greg, sweetheart. Yeah. And when this movie started, I was dying laughing in my house, like, oh my gosh, it is good to get back to an old friend.
Joe:
Greg: Cinematic.
Joe: So what I also want to say and this is where, why I think it’s the high watermark. Yeah. The stakes of the universe are as high as they’ve ever been. We have Letty in the fourth one who has died. Sure. Another person I think he’s from the first one. Vince been Matt.
Greg: Schultz.
Joe: Yeah. So like you raise the stakes. You have a great action movie. Yeah. And we haven’t, they haven’t discovered that they can just bring anybody back at any time. That’s right sir. And then sixth they bring Letty back.
Greg: Spoilers. Jeez.
Joe: And then they do kill Gal Gadot’s character until the 10th one when she comes back. Yeah. Of course. But because of that, I do feel like it gives the world a little bit more weight. And it’s hard to say those words. Talking about fast five. I get it 100%. Like you could walk out right on this episode if you need to, but we’d understand.
Joe: Yeah, we’d understand. But we have long said that. 4 or 5 and six. Yeah. Are the best three movies. Like, I would hold those up as action movies against almost any movies out there.
Greg: Right. We’ve debated the three album run in music. We’ve debated the three movie run. And what have we come up with in that debate for movies?
Joe: For movies? I think that this is Mission Impossible five, six and seven. With six still being the best action movie I’ve ever seen. Yep. It’s hard. I don’t know that I would put John Wick in this category.
Greg: No, but John Wick has been pretty consistent. John Wick has been pure John Wick. There’s really no low point. So that might be a four movie run. Honestly.
Joe: Could be. And I just announced today that there’s going to be a fifth. They did. Yeah. What’s coming back? One more, one more. So I’ll watch it. I’m a little disappointed, honestly, because I feel like this. And then they have to have the the universe. They have the ballerina coming out. They have, you know, some other stuff that’s going on.
Joe: But I will watch every single damn one of those movies. So, yeah, I can’t say anything.
Greg: I didn’t believe he was dead at the end of four.
Joe: No. Yeah. No, that’s another one where it’s like anybody could come back at any time. And those honestly. Right. Like, okay.
Greg: But it’s hard to find a fourth, fifth and sixth movie in a, in a series. I mean, you probably need to look at James Bond, but I don’t think you could look at 4 or 5 and six and James Bond because I think You Only Live Twice is in there, which we love. But yeah, people think are great movies.
Joe: Yeah. You have to look at the like the long series of like three movies in a row within. Yeah.
Greg: Lord of the rings one, two, three.
Joe: Those are amazing.
Greg: People would say that’s in the conversation.
Joe: I would take them out for this reason. I think those are great movies. They’re not action movies in the same way that the movies that we’re talking about, like we would never review fellowship of the ring on this as a great bad movie.
Greg: Sure.
Joe: Those movies are great and they’re also based on books with a clear like, this is the story we’re going to tell over three movies. I don’t know that I think that might be giving them a lot of credit to say that they had this three movie arc in them. When Justin Lin took the reins on the fourth Fast and Furious movie.
Joe: Yeah. They say we’re going to create this three movie arc, which is going to be spectacular.
Greg: Yeah. Because these movies all start in and kind of back to back right.
Joe: Yeah. But yeah I would have we’d have to I’d have to think about it. But I don’t think that there’s a even within like the newer James Bond with the Daniel Craig three in a row that are really this good. There are two Casino Royale. There are three movies in there that I think are great, but they.
Greg: Needed five to do it.
Joe: Yes. You could make the argument that they they did three that were great. And then they needed four more films to, like, ruin the franchise of Fast and Furious. But these three movies are nearly perfect. I think it’s basically the Ilsa Foust arc. Yeah. Mission impossible. That holds a candle to this.
Greg: Totally agree. I mean, we always have to say, like, the first three Bourne movies are really good. I guess Star Wars Empire Strikes Back, return of the Jedi, but none of those other movies speak directly to the heart of Joe Skywalker. It breaks my heart. Yeah. I kind of feel like you said when you’re trying to explain great bad movies to people, this is the movie you point to.
Greg: I’m exactly the same way. In fact, before we even reconnected as people, I describe this and I’d like to create a new category for our show.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: For the highest water mark movies that we talk about, this is one of the best bad movies.
Joe: Yes, I agree.
Greg: We haven’t reviewed a movie that was one of the best bad movies in the way that I feel about and past five yet.
Joe:
Greg: It is an absolute tip of the spear. It is an absolute if you’re going to watch one. And this happened this last weekend, I was hanging out with some friends who are not above a big dumb movie, and they had never seen Fast five or any of the Fast and Furious movies, and I just didn’t even hesitate. I was like, you need to watch fast five.
Greg: And I will fly to your house to watch it.
Joe: Yeah. In fact, I’ve already packed. Yeah.
Greg: Any of our listeners, I have a budget to fly to your house and introduce you to fast five, if you have not seen it.
Joe: Yes. In fact, both of us will come if we need to. That is how important this is.
Greg: This movie opens where fast Forward left us.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Vin diesel has been arrested for what happened in fast four. And also.
Joe: Like everything else that happened before that.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they kind of include his long history. Then at the end of Fast Four, he’s on this bus with a bunch of criminals, prisoners, and, three cars are there to save him. And the way that they save him is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Joe:
Greg: If they somehow, like, make it so that the bus flips on its side, which is the thing busses can’t do.
Joe:
Greg: I think they had to attach like three cannons is what they call them to make cars jump. To make this bus actually do it, they had to put three cannons on it to make it do what it does. Yeah. It doesn’t hurt the car it crashes into. No. And then it just rolls for 20 rolls.
Joe: Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Everyone is fine. We assume. Or dead, except for Vin Diesel. I’m not sure how to read that.
Greg: It’s important to know that people on busses don’t have seatbelts.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: There is no way anybody in this bus is still alive. But we cut to the news and they say miraculously, everyone was fine.
Joe: Yeah. And miraculously, after this, they all end up in Brazil like there’s no fast for logic of how they got there. I assume they were on some train that went somewhere in there, you know. Whatever.
Greg: So the Hobbs and Shaw travel agency was available? Yeah, to get them to Brazil, to Brazil. So prison bus escape. Where do you stand? On prison bus escape. I’m going to be asking you at every action scene in this movie.
Joe: Okay. Prison bus escape. I’m all in. Yeah. Like, I cannot be overstated enough how dumb some of the things are in this movie. Yep. And because of those things, I love it even more. Yeah.
Greg: That’s no surprise to anyone who was a year into this journey with us.
Joe: Yeah. So it just it sets the tone perfectly for what you’re going to get. You’re getting real car crashes, right? There are no consequences to these car crashes that I can see in any way, right? Other than they can do crazy things with cars to make busses flip and do all of that. Yep. And it’s the perfect opening to this movie.
Greg: Were you kind of hoping that after this perfect opening, the title would have some sort of sound effect?
Joe: I was hoping for that, yes.
Greg: Here’s what the title sounds like after this bus has rolled 20 times. Screen goes to black and it says fast five.
Greg: The loudest noise history in history. Also a little one to make it go away. Right there. It’s like a little. Yeah.
Joe: If you’re playing our stock drinking game. Spoiler alert you’re drinking at that one. It’s the best.
Greg: I need to hear it again.
Joe: Yeah. Please. Greatest.
Greg: And then whatever that noise is of it, like, pixelated and going away. Then we go into a bunch of news footage explaining to us who everybody is.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Vin diesel jr, Danny Brewster, Paul Walker and that they’re now outlaws. And there is so much like blipping and pixelation needlessly, because we can’t just have news footage.
Joe: No.
Greg: It needs to be blippi and crazy and edited like they’re watching it on the worst laptop in history.
Joe: Or Tony Scott is directing the news footage. Yes.
Greg: Oh my gosh, so many Tony Scott moments in this movie.
Joe: Yeah, this is like Justin Lin’s homage to Tony Scott. That little section. Yeah.
Greg: This is, two years after unstoppable, which was the last. And we’ve gotten unstoppable. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Of course we got to that great, great movie.
Joe: I think the only thing that we’re missing, Justin Lin, is 7000 helicopters to film this movie. Because I don’t think that there is a helicopter in this, and that’s a real missed opportunity, quite frankly.
Greg: So what on will they got to build to the choppers? You know, there was a scene kind of John Wick style where, there was a chopper sound effect overhead, but we never saw it.
Joe:
Greg: Which is glorious. I feel like every movie should have that just to make it feel expensive. And then we’re in Brazil and we have the most beautiful shots of Brazil every time we get to those aerial shots. And it’s the nylon guitar music. We’re no longer fast, choppy editing. It’s just beautiful. Rio.
Joe: Yeah. This is a spoiler alert for one of my drinking games. Every time they show the Jesus statue about everything you drink, because it’s a lot, especially at the beginning. The second unit director just went a little crazy, was shot. I was like, did you want something else in Brazil? Because all I shot was the Jesus statue. So was that a problem?
Greg: So I listen to the commentary on this one, and Justin Lin said he was skeptical about how much they should show it. But when they were scouting and talking to all the locals, the locals use that statue as like a real marker of where they are in town. So if they’re meeting up with somebody, they will actually say where in relation to that statue they are.
Greg: So there really is just kind of a focus there with that statue. So I was like, all right, well let’s use the statue.
Joe: That’s awesome. I mean, in a movie like this, I’m not going to aim at it. And stuff like that. I’m not mad at anything about this movie. I loved every second I’ve had. So.
Greg: And we arrive at Vince’s house.
Joe:
Greg: We meet baby Niko. Yeah. Vince, from the first movie, he looks at Paul Walker and calls him a buster. Just like in the first, The Fast and the furious. Yeah. And I have maybe a controversial take on this.
Joe: Okay. Bring it on.
Greg: I think Vince is the best actor in this movie.
Joe: I don’t think that’s controversial.
Greg: I know he holds the scenes so much better than everybody else.
Joe: And yeah.
Greg: And in the in the commentary, Justin Lin says that he was the person in this movie that pushed back and really needed to, like, debate and fight with him about the scenes and the character, which he said, I welcome him. It was great. You know, we were making it better the whole time. But he said, I probably talked to him about more about his character and about the scenes and anybody else.
Greg: And if you think about it like, that guy’s not in much of the movie. Yeah, but oh my gosh, he’s just he holds it so much better. So anyways, Vince is talking to Paul Walker at the table.
Joe: And.
Greg: He’s saying we have a job. And Jordana Brewster is talking to Vince, his wife.
Joe: And then they give the classic, you know, you’re watching a great bad movie and they’re going to tell you what’s going to happen with a character. Yeah, she’s got to run out of the room because she’s going to throw up, you know, explain that. But it’s pretty obvious that she’s pregnant because that’s how morning sickness works. If you’re in one on one of the movies, we watch them.
Greg: And Russell says, does he know? And Joe Dante Brewster says, now, yeah. So okay. Well, me is pregnant. She has been with Paul.
Joe: Walker for a week. Yeah.
Greg: How long were the events of fast for.
Joe: Maybe a month. And then how long were they together within that? So, yeah, anywhere from if we’re being kind six weeks to two weeks.
Greg: It’s 2 to 3. Yeah, it’s what I had to say.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Amazing. Never thought of that until this moment. I’ve seen this movie.
Joe: 100 things.
Greg: So we get a scene where Vince and Paul Walker are talking. And this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Vince is acting, and they cut to Paul Walker’s blank face, just staring at him with nothing. And it is so amazing. This happens so many times in this movie where we cut to Paul Walker and I don’t know what he’s doing, but he was awesome, let’s be honest.
Joe: Yeah. He’s awesome. He’s perfect. Yeah.
Greg: Brian O’Conner in every way except for this kind of scene.
Joe: Yeah, except for acting.
Greg: More like except for reacting. It’s when he doesn’t have a line and they cut to.
Joe: Him.
Greg: And there is no reaction from him. Yeah. Oh my gosh, it made me laugh so hard. And this is what Justin Lin is dealing with. He’s like, I’m going to make a masterpiece despite this. And I always think about like bands after they’ve made enough records, they recognize their limitations and rather than fighting them, they embrace them.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And this is like classic, you know, U2’s story. I think I’ve mentioned it here. They just said at some point they realize they’re just things we can’t do as a band, and we need to embrace that. And, we will stay within those limitations and keep doing what we do. And I feel like Justin Lin has almost entirely figured out how to stay within the limitations of what he’s been given here.
Joe: Yeah, but Paul.
Greg: Walker’s face is.
Joe: Where he isn’t able to.
Greg: So they he says, hey, looks like you guys need some money. I’ve got a train heist coming up. There’s a job. It’s easy. Just get these three cars. It’ll be really easy to unload them. And so we’re off to the races. You know, Vin Diesel’s car shows up right before the train heist. Yeah, but we don’t see him.
Greg: That car is ruined in every movie. Is that true?
Joe: I think so, and.
Greg: Then it magically comes.
Joe: Back and, yeah, it’s like that car sound. And I think I even have that as a drinking game. It’s the. Yeah, the Vin Diesel car sound like the engine revving as he’s like stopping the.
Greg: Car, right? Right. No.
Joe: So perfect. It’s there is.
Greg: Nothing that can make this car go away.
Joe: No. Yeah.
Greg: So they go to rob a car and they’re like, suddenly we’re in it. We’re in a train.
Joe: Yeah. From what I remember, they actually, like, bought the train tracks and the train for the movie. Yeah. And that scene is really fun. Yeah. Again, makes no sense. Like, the main bad guy is there directing them, and then they just kind of get me to get in a different car than she’s supposed to, and everyone’s just okay with this.
Joe: And then that’s like, what sets off this movie. And a lot of the plot of this movie is the fact that she’s allowed to get in this car, and she doesn’t go to the main rendezvous point to go to another spot, and that sets off them being hunted by the bad guys.
Greg: It’s really rough, the first act of this movie. I’m following what’s going on and making drama where there is none. It is bursting at the seams.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It’s like, okay, can we just. What are we doing? Yeah. This is conflict where I didn’t think there was going to be any.
Joe:
Greg: But Mia is looking at a bunch of like travel magazines on the train before they start the heist. She said do you know what all these places have in common. Paul Walker says what. She says no extradition, which I feel like makes this suddenly a prequel to the sixth one, because they say extradition so many times in the sixth one.
Greg: A spoiler alert for a drinking game a year from now.
Joe: When.
Greg: Extradition becomes the most important word that I probably had to look up. In 2011, I was like, I don’t know what that means. Yeah, I forgot to mention that Mia speaks Portuguese to Rosa, and it was like, what? How did she learn? Yeah, fluent Portuguese living in LA.
Joe: Don’t worry about it. No, don’t worry about it at all. It’s awesome. And it’s like a romantic moment between them on the run, you know? No additions.
Greg: I mean, we’re all rooting.
Joe: Yeah, we’re all rooting for Brian.
Greg: And Mia, right? Yeah, yeah. So they have some kind of crazy device that lets them scan, like a key card from one of the train workers so that they can now get back to the train car that has these cars in it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: She, like, bumps into the guy, and then Brian grabs his keycard and swipes it so we can make a duplicate of it. And when he swipes it, it goes beep. It makes the loudest. I’ve now copied your card beep that all 15 people around him notice like, oh, he just grabbed a card and scanned it into something and made it beep.
Greg: That is a main throughline in this movie. Everything is making way more noise than it needs to.
Joe: Yes, and like the obvious answer is just like right there in front of their face later on in the movie, they’ve set up like a course so they can drive fast enough to get in and get the money. Sure. And then they go, oh, we just need an invisible car. So basically they need to have cars that are like not going to get seen, that they’re police cars and then they have to go steal them.
Joe: I was like, why wasn’t that plan A?
Greg: Because we’re all human beings that just need to grow.
Joe: Yeah, we needed that character building moment. We needed, you know, Tash and Roman to give each other a hard time and yeah, all of that. And it’s perfect in every way, and I wouldn’t want them to change it. But it’s one of those things that the more times you watch it, the more it’s like, maybe that was not the best plan.
Greg: It’s because they wanted to get the most out of their money and Tokyo Drift was a cheaper movie to make. And Justin Lin was like, let’s just do some Tokyo drifting. Yeah, in this building. Just like in Tokyo.
Joe: Yeah. How do we connect the dots to Tokyo Drift? Yeah. Which happens two years after this movie and the timeline of the universe, so.
Greg: Oh, boy, I went cross-eyed.
Joe: Now, maybe not that far. Anyway, it’s after six. Before seven.
Greg: Should we get into the chronological order of the Fast and Furious series?
Joe: I think so.
Greg: Joe, can you give us the chronological dance that the Fast and Furious series takes, and can you start with better luck tomorrow?
Joe: I hope I can. We have the first one, which takes place anywhere from 5 to 20 years before. Story. The.
Joe: This movie. Okay. Then you have the second one. Two fast two furious where we do not have Vin Diesel, right?
Greg: Florida.
Joe: Okay. And then you have.
Greg: We meet Ludacris and Tyrese. Yeah, yeah. Even Mendez.
Joe: Even Mendez, you have them flying a car onto a boat.
Greg: We’ve all been.
Joe: There. Not a great movie.
Greg: Hold on, I might need.
Joe: That’s a great bad movie. I feel like we’ll do every single one of these movies on this show. Totally. The third one is Tokyo Drift, which then, in the chronological order, happens after the sixth one, right before the seventh, because that’s where we get. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Coming in as the bad guy after Owen shot. Yeah. Has been injured.
Joe: Right. Taken by everyone.
Greg: So go.
Joe: On then. We have the seven and then the eighth throws the timeline off again. Because now all of a sudden, Vin Diesel has a baby that he’s had. Not with Letty, right? With Elsa Pataky or Elena, who is just super cool in the sixth one with him just going off right find his right. Totally the love of his life.
Greg: Well, she’s married to Chris Hemsworth in real life, so she’s like, do whatever you got to do.
Joe: Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Do do you? Yeah. Oh yeah. The timeline is a little rough to really figure out exactly when all of this is happening. Right. It should also be noted that in the eighth one, Ben Dekker, I have.
Greg: No idea what you’re about to say. You can say anything right now.
Joe: Yeah, that’s what’s beautiful about this franchise. Dekker John now is kind of good. Yeah, because he saves the baby.
Greg: Yeah. He saves family.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So that’s emblematic of how cross-eyed you can get if you really tried to consider the full story of The Fast and the furious. But if you just go 4 or 5, six, you can opt into one. If you want. You can opt into two. You probably don’t need to watch three, but it’s good.
Joe: It’s okay. It’s like fish out of water. Yeah, there’s a couple nice shots in it, a couple good action scenes.
Greg: It’s much better than I thought it was going to be.
Joe: To me, it’s like The Karate Kid with drifting.
Greg: 100%.
Joe: Yeah, 4 or 5 and six are the cream of the crop. I will allow furious seven into the conversation. Sure. Really. For nostalgia. And because Paul Walker dies while filming and they make the decision to not kill off his character. And then for the rest of the movies, he’s just the babysitter for everybody’s children while they go off and save the world.
Joe: So yeah.
Greg: Because he’s a gentleman and seven is the by far the most profitable one. And it’s better.
Joe: Than.
Greg: I thought it was going to be. I didn’t like it in the theater. But we’ll get the furious seven. Come on.
Joe: Yeah for sure. And it’s, it’s one of those that is it jumps the shark after furious seven. This movie is like it is on the ramp to jumping the shark to me. And because of what happens with Paul Walker, it is kind of gets a special exception for me. But the first half of that movie is perfect. And then the second half it starts to give signs of where this franchise is going, and with seven and on, they get too reliant on CGI and it becomes more and more like ridiculous of what they’re going to try to do.
Joe: Yeah. And how they’re trying to amp up the bad guys and what they’re doing. And it just feels so ridiculous.
Greg: Here’s what’s so ridiculous is I completely agree with you. Yet fast five is the most ridiculous movie you will ever watch. Neal.
Joe: Yes, I agree. Yeah. Somehow Fast Five is grounded in this franchise. That’s the craziest thing about this.
Greg: That is the most amazing aspect of what we’re talking about right now.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So they get back to the train car that has the cars in it. They meet some of the bad guys. They recognize that something’s a little fishy about this one blue car with white stripes. A GT on the side of the train is somehow like cut off.
Joe:
Greg: Like the braking into something. Yeah. Pretty awesome shot. There’s like the torches or whatever kind of going in the circle. The whole side of the train falls off and there’s like a truck in the deserts and it’s now right next to the train so they can pull the cars off of the train on this truck. And Vin Diesel gets his intro, the side of the train comes off and Vin Diesel comes in.
Greg: Mia is so stoked to see him. And then they start having just regular conversations at regular volume. Yeah, despite the fact that they’re on a moving train and the side of the train car is off.
Joe: Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. It is the most perfect.
Greg: If you can just to remind yourself, these people are on the train, and there’s a massive flatbed truck next to the train that’s driving through the desert next to the train tracks. Oh my gosh, it’s just beautiful. It’s just incredible.
Joe: Easily going 60 to 75 miles an hour. Yeah. You know no thought to how that would actually work. Now that truck is staying perfectly attached because I think there’s like some sort of like a bar that like flips over and connects and then they, like, have a pulley that pulls the car over and then they go back and they come up, don’t think about it.
Joe: Just watch it and enjoy how perfect it is.
Greg: Well, I can give you the short answer all your questions. It’s working pretty well.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: There’s nothing to worry about here.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: There’s very little bumps. Stephen, think about.
Joe:
Greg: Oh my gosh. So they get two of the cars off.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then they’re working to do the third one. And some federal agents show up. They’re like DEA agents Paul Walker has gotten the keys to the car by like punching through a glass case. I’m reminded that just punching through glass is nothing in the Fast and Furious series.
Joe: Yeah, if you do it right, you can just. Yeah, right.
Greg: N totally like Vin Diesel, like, elbowed through a couple windshields. It fast four.
Joe: Yeah, that tracks nothing.
Greg: So Vin Diesel hops in the third car flies out.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Brian is on the back of the flatbed truck doing some awesome stunts.
Joe: Yeah. Bouncing around.
Greg: And then for some reason, the flatbed truck somehow is away from the train and then turns towards the train and then flies directly into the train. Like the train gets on just like half of its wheels for a second.
Joe: Then he’s got to jump on to Vin Diesel’s car. Right. And he’s driving. And then they drive off a cliff because they’re at a bridge of course. Right. Yeah. And it’s such a fall. Nobody survives this. But they land perfectly in the water and they pop right back up. Yeah. Yeah. And then the bad guys are there.
Joe: Capture them. And it’s I’m just shooting them for messing everything up.
Greg: They attach them to some chains.
Joe: Yeah. Everybody but the people torturing them leave. Sure. There’s no guards and then they’re able to escape and like beat up the torturers. That’s perfect.
Greg: Okay. I have to slow you down okay. You were speeding past so much stuff I need to play you some of the commentary that Justin Lin says specifically about when Paul Walker jumps on Vin Diesel’s car and then they go over that ledge, he kind of tips his hand to what it is we’re doing here in this movie.
Joe:
Greg: So this is Justin Lin talking about them jumping so high up down into some water. Here we.
Joe: Go. Yeah. And here you see them jumping off the cliff. We did that practically. We basically launch two corvettes off the cliff. And then you know my country I designed this descender, to be able to have the stunt guys jump off. I think a lot of people are like, saying, oh, well, you can’t technically survive that 250ft fall and stuff like that.
Joe: And, you know, I know that everyone knows that. But I think part of what makes this franchise fun and great is it’s to try to do everything practically, but at the same time, push it, push it, and embrace the ridiculousness of it. When I was talking to everybody and seeing how high the highest that we can have the people jump and actually survive, it just was a spectacular enough.
Joe: And, you know, our challenge was to really just push it, but actually figure out a way, practically to do it so that we don’t kill anyone. Yeah.
Greg: He says that many times throughout the commentary, it was just like, it just wasn’t big enough. We just needed to be big. And I know it’s ridiculous. That’s what we were doing. They were all, like, completely wide eyed going into this, and they just killed it. They just absolutely destroyed it. I mean, they perfected it.
Joe: I 100% agree with everything he said, especially in this one. Real car crashes, real stunt. Yeah, yeah. And this really is this opening sequence is the tone setter for what is to come right of just what, what we’re going to see. It is so perfect because this is what you want in an action. This is what I want to watch in an action movie.
Joe: I want to see. Nobody’s going to this is going wasn’t realistic at all. You know, you’re going, I want to see him push it to the ridiculous. Yeah, but yeah, it’s weird to say this, but it is ridiculous. But there are some rules within which they’re operating. Sure. Yeah. This is where I think further on in the franchise, it starts to suffer because they kind of like try to top.
Joe: Yeah everything. And because of that it kind of pushes the bounds of what you can accept from like just like a disbelief. You know when they’re sending people into space and they’re magnets and there’s you know it’s fun and it’s silly. But this is what you want to watch. The good guys are good. The bad guys are bad.
Joe: Right. And we’re going to see some blow up. That’s what it is.
Greg: Two cars really went off the cliff. Two stunt people really went off the cliff. They’re attached to the senders, which is like a wire that will slow you down so that you don’t actually hit the ground as fast as you’re supposed to. But they really did this, and a lot of the commentary, Justin Lin said. The studio kept saying, you can’t do this.
Greg: And in this scene, the thing they specifically couldn’t do was drive the truck into the train because they only had one train, and they just kept saying, you can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t do it. And Justin Lin just kept saying, we’re we have to do it. And so a lot of his commentary is people saying, you can’t do this.
Greg: And him saying, you guys, you don’t understand what we’re doing. We’re pushing it. We’re trying to make every dollar count. You know, we’re trying to do everything we can. And he said, it was so funny. You know, it’s like I’m making $125 million movie. And we really tried to milk that 125 million to get the most we possibly could.
Greg: And so a lot of this movie wasn’t filmed in Rio. It was filmed in Puerto Rico and Arizona and a bunch of different locations because they could make their dollar go further. Anyways, so so interesting. But this train heist, we talk often about the people who put together these stunts. And for this one in particular, their second unit director was not the second unit director of the rest of the movie, which is this guy named Spiro Risottos.
Greg: This one for the train. Was this guy named Alexander Witt. And you feel it? You feel the truck go into the train. You feel these guys going off the cliff. You feel it all. It’s really kind of incredible. So let me tell you some things that Alexander Witt has been the second unit director on Joe speed. Twister.
Joe: Good start.
Greg: Speed two.
Joe: Limbs took a hit.
Greg: Probably some good stunts I haven’t watched all the way through Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Bourne Identity, triplex, Italian Job, which was specifically a movie that they were trying to make this fast five to be like they wanted it to be. The Italian Job meets Ocean’s 11.
Joe:
Greg: Pirates of the Caribbean. The first one, Tony Scott’s taking of Pelham 123, Casino Royale. These are all really good movies.
Joe: Okay, so this guy knows what he’s doing is absolutely.
Greg: This is the guy you want for your train. He’s seen the town safe house with Ryan Reynolds, and Denzel will get the safe house. You’re kidding.
Joe: Me. Sure. Yeah. Skyfall.
Greg: Specter, Avengers infinity War, Jungle cruise. And remember, I’m the one who likes Jungle Cruise. No time to die and fast ex. Okay, Alexander Witt, we will meet you again in future great bad movies. But thank you for what you did in this train sequence. It’s unbelievable.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: So we’re 17 minutes into the movie, and now we get to meet the bad guy.
Joe: It’s perfect. Yep. Typical bad guy scene. Yeah. Torture. They get out of it.
Greg: Can we talk about how they get out of it?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Do you remember in Hobbs and Shaw when, the rock holds onto the chain and is able to keep the helicopter from flying away with his massive moment of strength? Yeah. And we learned that that was actually, like, a brand moment for the Fast and Furious series. I think this scene is the time where Vin Diesel does his incredible moment of strength.
Greg: He’s tied up to a chain and he just, like, pulls his arms apart and is no longer tied to the chain. It doesn’t make any sense. No, other than Vin Diesel is like a superhero and is able to just do this every once in a while.
Joe: I know this is when Vin Diesel was in shape, man. Yeah, they weren’t the aging him and Mike, taking the dad bod off. They were just right.
Greg: So he just, like, pulls his arms apart and now he can take care of business.
Joe: Yeah, it’s.
Greg: Ridiculous. But also like, oh, okay. So we get to turn off our brains. Great.
Joe: Yeah. That’s really what that opening train heist is telling us is totally don’t think too hard. Sit back and enjoy it as soon as you do that. This movie makes perfect sense and is so enjoyable in every way possible.
Greg: Totally. So then they escape and we have more aerial shots of Rio, specifically the favelas.
Joe: Yeah, and.
Greg: Then it’s night time. A ridiculously large plane lands.
Joe:
Greg: And Dwayne The Rock Johnson comes out of it.
Joe: Wearing the tightest t shirt possible. Thank you under armor for that t shirt I am. Yeah. How many times that under armor. Just like come into focus.
Greg: Totally.
Joe: Totally there in Rio. And yeah he’s giving orders because he’s from some government agency that doesn’t exist in real life. Yeah. And he just orders people around. But he’s like the best. He’s the Tommy Lee Jones in the Fugitive. Fast and furious. Averse. Yeah. And he’s awesome. He’s just rocking it up everywhere. You see, it’s sometimes a little much.
Joe: I struggle sometimes with the rock. I have to be honest. Like it’s a little.
Greg: Wait, have you said that before? In the show, we’ve covered the run down and Hobbs and Shaw.
Joe: I feel like I may have said it when we. We didn’t release this one, but it was San Andreas. Where? Oh, sure. Sure. It’s just like, oh God.
Joe: And then, like, some of it is even just where his character goes. In this I can see the threads and I’m just like, this is annoying.
Greg: Joe, let me ask you a very important question. Early on in this show we’ll get to important questions. But, where is The Rock’s character Lucas Rebecca Hobbs from? What is the accent that he is.
Joe: Doing.
Greg: In this movie? Fast five?
Joe: I don’t know.
Greg: According to the many accents he uses, he’s from everywhere.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: He is all over the place with his accents in this movie. In a single scene, he will be from different places.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: It is incredible.
Joe: But mainly from Samoa. If you’ve watched Hobbs and Shaw.
Greg: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, totally. How many times have you said you know, I like my desert first in your life?
Joe: I mean, honestly a lot because that’s kind of how I roll.
Greg: But yeah. Does this come up in meetings where where you say, now give me some veggies.
Joe: Yeah. Give me my dessert first and then, let me have the veggies. So.
Greg: All right, so we meet the rock, and they’re trying to track down where these cars went from this train heist. Let’s listen to the scene of one of my favorite things that I have quoted since this movie came out 14 years ago.
Clip: News. Bad news. You know, I like my dessert first. I actually like the rail line. Like you just found a couple spots where they unload the cars instead of trucks, headed west until it hit the main highway and disappeared. Another set of trucks headed east on the seven inch wheelbase and half inch track Gt40 that was missing from the manifest.
Clip: Follow the trail a couple of miles, pretty easy in the scrub and move. They’ll leave the sign. Give me the damn badges. The ground rolls into a hard park and we lost that track to.
Greg: Give me the damn veggies.
Joe:
Greg: Amazing. Oh my gosh. He is just all over the place though. And this.
Joe: Is. Yeah it’s weird to say this but he’s still finding the character of Hoth. I feel like
Greg: Give him some time.
Joe: Joe. Yeah this is the part so many movies because he’s like I feel like his catch phrase is like, you sumbitch. Yeah, yeah. And he says it like, one time in this, but in Hobbs and Shaw, and then the other one’s on my ass.
Greg: So insufferable.
Joe: Yeah, it’s a little much.
Greg: And something in this movie was a little much.
Joe: Yeah. Not in this one. No, in future one.
Greg: Okay. This one’s the tasteful one.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Completely agree. Did you know that Vin Diesel put it out to the fans on social media? Who should we bring in to the Fast and Furious verse and the fans on social media, said Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
Joe: I mean, he is perfect in this movie. He is.
Greg: I remember being very excited that he was in it.
Joe: Yeah, because you need that. I mean, they raised the stakes a little bit so that now they’re being chased by the government and the bad guys. And how is that all going to work? And that’s like the diehard recipe. Exactly. Wow. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. I’ve thought about that. The first act of this movie is just really hard to follow.
Joe: It’s all about them getting the chip out of the car, right? That they are then able to hack into. Yeah.
Greg: We should say that something was fishy about the guy in the train car. Yeah, Vin Diesel was always eight steps ahead of everybody. So he has Mia take that car. He changes the plan, tells her to take it and drive someplace else so they can have whatever is important. And why would he care?
Joe: Don’t worry about it. He’s got a sixth sense about these things.
Greg: It’s such a leap.
Joe: Then they’re in some, like, warehouse, warehouse space that how they can afford that and.
Greg: Bankrolling is a serious question in this movie.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, they’re taking the car apart. They find this yep thing. And honestly, I’ve never thought about it until this moment. Why would you have a chip in a car that has all the places you’re hiding money? If you’re a bad guy in Brazil, my gut is you wouldn’t want any paper trail anywhere, and you just want to keep it up, like in your head, right?
Joe: But what they discover on this chip is all the safe houses where they count the money of the biggest bad guy in all of the land who they’ve met already and escape from. Right.
Greg: The chip plot point is given to us in Fast Forward. There are many things about this movie where they’re like, well, this kind of movie has to have this. It has to have that, and they just give it to us all in one scene.
Joe:
Greg: Here is the good guys discovering the chip.
Joe: What do you think.
Clip: Was definitely a custom chip. Look at all these side minutiae for data entry side menus.
Greg: The sound effects.
Joe: That’s the thing I mean is.
Clip: Yeah look at that same building, same order every week.
Clip: The delivery schedule.
Greg: Just plot exposition.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: No computer makes that amount of noise.
Joe:
Greg: What world are we in right now.
Joe: The my new world obviously.
Greg: So the rocks team gets the car was taken apart. So they put it back together and he’s like figure out why this car was a big deal. They’re like we can’t find it. It seems to be running. And the Rock is able to walk up to this car. And his very first guess is to discover, oh, it must be a chip missing.
Greg: So here’s him walking up to the car, looking at it and recognizing that, he is opening up like the whatever. The thing is that the chip was in.
Clip: It took the chip.
Greg: There’s a screen that says, like, no chip in here. And so he it took him three seconds. He’s his team has been working on this for hours. They’re exhausted. They’re sitting down okay. So here we go. Listen to how fast the plot moves in this scene.
Clip: We got here. The police scanner, armed robbery at the house of the blond actress cross-checked against property owned by one of her numerous corporations.
Greg: Ray is is the bad guy.
Clip: That’s our guys. And whatever was on that chip led them directly to that house.
Greg: So they’ve now discovered that there’s a chip missing. The good guys must have the chip there somehow. Just like right behind these guys impossibly.
Joe: Is them for sure. How do you know that? Because no one else in Ray is stupid enough to rob radios.
Greg: Elena is able to get in some sort of, like, macho thing.
Joe: Yeah, it’s just.
Greg: Like on fast forward. It’s unbelievable.
Joe: Perfect in every single way. You know?
Greg: We don’t need plot.
Joe: Yeah, we.
Greg: Just need to get to the next set piece.
Joe: Then we’re in an action scene. They burn the money. Yeah, to get him to consolidate all of his money in one spot so that they can steal it. That’s the plot of the movie.
Greg: It’s incredible.
Joe: Really. At its core, this is a heist movie with car chases, and I love it. I love every second of it.
Greg: It’s a complete change to the Fast and Furious one for kind of stepped in this direction. And then the studio was like, okay, this movie did pretty well unexpectedly, so why don’t you take it to a new level?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But Vince, in a scene with Vin Diesel, Matt Schultz, first of all, gets actor of the year in the Fast and Furious movie.
Joe: Yes, whatever awards he needs, he gets them.
Greg: He’s entirely right. Let’s listen to Vince talking about what’s going on here.
Joe: He never listen to me.
Clip: Not when I told you he was a cop. Not now. You never trust me. And look where it’s gotten us. Look at our family now. I can’t go home. Your sister stuck in this life.
Clip: Is Letty. Dom Gersh. Where’s Letty?
Greg: And now, to prove that this really is just a soap opera, Vin diesel has to turn around as he walks out because he can’t even face it. This movie is such a soap opera.
Joe:
Greg: And Vince is the only one who can actually. Yeah. Sell it.
Joe: I never thought of it that way, but that is the perfect way to describe this movie. It’s just any time that they’re acting. Acting. Yeah it is a soap opera through and through. Vin diesel does the thing in this movie where he does it with Vince and the Rock at different points, or like they’re fighting, and instead of hitting them at the end like he hits, you think he’s hit them and he’s hit the wall, or he hit the floor.
Joe: Yes, around them. And it’s so good. It’s so glorious. It is so.
Greg: Glorious. Yeah. So Hobbs decides it’s time to go find them. They go to, like, where Vince was in the favelas. Yeah. And just to show the music in this movie is not. The sound effects in this movie are nuts. The sound in this movie is a soap opera as well. They’re going for every trick in the book and I love them for it.
Greg: This is the Rock’s team walking up to Vince’s front door, and all of the people in like Vince’s crew, they’re all like getting their guns ready. But then we discover something special about the rock and his gun.
Greg: Lots of guns.
Greg: Sound effects everywhere. Yeah. We discover the rock has a ton solo gun on his leg.
Greg: Does it have a battery.
Joe: It must. What’s that noise.
Greg: What is the battery in the Rock’s gun that’s on his leg.
Joe: I don’t know, it’s one of those like here he is walking into literally like gang infested areas where everyone has a gun and he’s just like, no, mine’s bigger. So yeah that down there like oh okay. And then they just let him through.
Greg: Right? His team has these guns that have like I’m not joking. 20 things attached to them.
Joe:
Greg: I could not point to the thing that the bullets come out of on these things. There are so many things sticking out in every direction.
Joe: And this thing that I think the bad guys are coming, and then our good guys are running away, and then you have kind of moment where you see Elena and Vin Diesel meet and he loses his chain and she picks it up, but she he saves her from the bad guys. And so it. Right, all of it is perfect.
Joe: And then they’re all running away. Mia is pregnant. But then jumps like 40ft through the air, right through her roof and lands. And then everything is fine. Doesn’t lose the baby. Yeah, I don’t think she’s told him yet until they, like, are running away and then they’re all together. And then she decides to tell him in the middle of a chase.
Joe: Yeah, that she’s pregnant. Then Diesel’s there, and then. Then we have the central tenant for the rest of this series of family.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: Being the, I used to live my life a quarter mile at a time, and now it’s about family. Yeah.
Greg: That was Vin Diesel’s idea, by the way, bringing family in, and it became such a trope. But in this movie, it’s it works. It works. It’s not overdone.
Joe: Oh, perfect. I know I was like, I mean, I love this family. I mean, I need seven more movies. Oh, thank God they’re making seven more movie. Yeah.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, totally. So then they have this foot chase through the favelas. They’re all, like, running on the roofs. And this was like a two week shoot that they realized they had to do in like two days. And so Justin Lin said he sat down with the cast and the crew and said, we can’t cut the scene because we really want it.
Greg: And so we are going to shoot this like the biggest budget indie movie in history. And they shot it in like a day and a half. And he said the reason that the actors looked like they’re jumping off roofs is because the actors were really on wires, jumping off roofs.
Joe: That’s awesome.
Greg: All of the action in this scene is like all within, like 100ft. You know, people are in between the buildings and they look up and people are jumping over the roofs. It’s because they orchestrated it so it could all just happen. And the actors really did, like, jump through roofs.
Joe: It’s nuts. That’s awesome. My favorite moment in this is when the rock and Vin Diesel kind of meet in the Chase, where Vin Diesel has jumped through a window, and then the rock comes crashing through, and then Vin Diesel turns in the air in slow motion to leave the rock. Yeah, coming after him. It’s like chef’s kiss to you, Justin Lin, for that moment.
Greg: You know, when you’re mid-air and you decide you need to look behind you.
Joe: To have like a moment of connection with someone and slow motion, that might be a drinking game in our show.
Greg: I mean, maybe.
Greg: Look at how much work we’re putting into trying to explain the plot of this movie.
Joe: I know far more than they put in to this movie. Quite frankly.
Greg: But then we get the scene that happens in every Fast and Furious movie where Paul Walker and, are like drinking beers. Were they Coronas?
Joe: I don’t think they were. Honestly, I think one Vin Diesel has figured out how to hold a beer bottle that doesn’t look awkward and weird, like he’s holding a baton for, like, a track race, right? Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a Corona yet. That’s a later.
Greg: That’s later. Okay.
Joe: That’s four. And then after five.
Greg: Yeah, they couldn’t get the rights for five. Yeah. Apparently they’re loss. And so Paul Walker in this scene he just says.
Clip: Dom what do you remember about your father.
Greg: Just total non-sequitur.
Joe:
Greg: And Dom starts talking about family. But they are able to get two of our very favorite things condensed into like 20s of this movie. Let’s listen to this real quick.
Clip: Here’s how we’re going to do it. We’re going to use this. And one last.
Greg: One last job.
Clip: We’re going to take all of raise money every dime of it. And disappear.
Clip: Forever new passports, new lives. No more looking over our shoulder and we’re just going to buy our freedom. That’s right. You realize we’re talking about going up against the most powerful guy in all the real. Yes, we are.
Clip: Then we’re going to need a team.
Joe: To get the team together.
Greg: We get a montage of getting the team together.
Joe: It’s perfect in every way. Like if you said, create the best transition scene possible in an action movie. Yeah, this scene is perfect. One last job. Sure. Team together. Oh, and then give me the, like, jaunty music that like, yeah, carries me forward and I’m like. And goosebumps, right? Literally every time we get to.
Greg: See everybody’s Hobbs and Shaw travel scenario. Gizelle is just on like a motorcycle.
Joe: Yeah. Shows up.
Greg: To Rio. Obviously this movie, you know, in retrospect, is a lot like Den of Thieves, where it’s like, oh, we’re moving from trope to trope and I.
Joe: Am loving it. Yeah. That’s so.
Greg: Awesome.
Joe: I could watch that montage to over and over. Right. Give me that music. Yep. Coming in.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: Then you have the rocks team seeing them come in to. So you have like you know the push in and then hands of of everything happening. Oh my god that’s so good. And then who’s coming in. Everybody that we’ve ever cared about.
Greg: Yeah. So we get Santos and Leo from Los Bandelier us.
Joe: Got to have that.
Greg: The prequel to Fast and Furious, the short film that Vin.
Joe: Diesel directed.
Greg: And we watched together before that episode. And then they are also in Fast and Furious right there in the opening scene. Justin Lin basically shoots them as much as he can in one shot, because the way they’re playing off each other is hilarious. They’re green. Yeah. And then we get Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: From the second movie.
Joe:
Greg: We get Giselle from the fourth movie. We get Han from the third movie and Lois us right.
Joe: And the fourth one, but technically from the sixth or the seventh one. But that’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Yeah. Don’t think too hard.
Greg: Okay. Did you go chronological there when you were saying chronological that? Okay. Okay.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And basically in 2011 we get an Avengers of Fast and Furious movies and suddenly we have like 12 characters in this movie that were trying to keep arcs going for. And the movie mostly does it better than Jurassic.
Joe: Park, I think. So I think it sticks the landing and this one and then the sixth one really. Well there are silly, there’s, there’s a good banter. Yeah, yeah. There’s you know a love interest between Han and Giselle. Yeah. You have Vin Diesel kind of holding the center. You have Paul Walker and Mia and their family. So it’s it’s perfect.
Joe: And then they’re getting together. And then again, where did they get the space to do all of this? Where did they get the bankroll. Yeah. Don’t worry about.
Greg: It. Don’t worry about it.
Joe: And they’re building their plan to rob Santos of all of his money. Again this is probably why this is 2011 money. So it’s you know, we can probably double or triple what they had.
Greg: Oh, this is super important. $10 million in late April of 2011 is worth 14 million.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: So pretty good.
Joe: Yeah. Pretty good.
Greg: Should we talk about Giselle and Hunt?
Joe: They’re probably my favorite two characters in this movie. Yeah, yeah. Outside of, like, the rock and and them. So.
Greg: So she was like a soldier somewhere.
Joe: I think they actually give her, like, she’s in Mossad or formerly of the Israeli secret service. I feel like there’s like, that’s right line that they have in there.
Greg: And she just knows her way around.
Joe: Everything.
Greg: The guns and, kind of how it all works, spy stuff. In fact, there’s a scene where, like, she’s working on her gun, and Han walks up to her and she delivers a line that’s kind of representative of just how people talk in these movies. It just needs to sound philosophical. It doesn’t need to really make.
Joe: Yeah, a lot.
Greg: Of sense to what is actually happening. Here’s Han walking up to Giselle as she’s working on her gun.
Joe: Really like doing that stuff on how life is on the line. That’s when you learn about yourself.
Joe: That’s a fair deal.
Greg: No. Okay.
Joe: Well, yeah. No questions. No, no, it’s.
Greg: Jo, in the life when your life is on the line, that’s when you really know about yourself. You never really learned about yourself.
Joe: Absolutely. What does that mean? It was that ad libbed. Was it? Were they just, like, messing around? And that was like the fifth take. And they just.
Greg: They just kind of have chemistry and I’m on board, but I have no idea what they’re saying.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah okay. Yeah.
Greg: They’re one of my favorite things in this movie too.
Joe:
Greg: I’m entirely on board with Han and Giselle.
Joe: Being a couple. Yeah. Hannah’s also I mean I know he is pretty beloved in the Fast and Furious averse. Yeah. Yeah. But you know I really love Han Peter I’m no different than everybody else. Yeah, yeah. The fact that he’s always eating right. And then that’s used to like, you know, oh you’re, you know, you are a two pack a day smoker, right?
Joe: Yeah. I love their little storyline that they give it a little bit of room to breathe.
Greg: Gal Gadot is great in this movie. She also good in the fourth one. And that was her first film I think. But there is just so much harassment going her way. And I feel like plot wise it is like she’s beautiful so she can’t be good at stuff. And then she shows that she’s good at stuff and it’s like, don’t underestimate people based on what they look like.
Greg: I feel like that’s the arc they’re going for it, but it’s so stupid. And it really kind of fell flat for me 14 years later.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: I’m like, this is pretty dumb. I don’t feel like people talk to each other like this anymore.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And I guess some it’s weird that they did back then. It’s a little bit like watching Mad Men. You’re like, wow, you really did this in the 60s?
Joe:
Greg: People really talk to Gal Gadot like this in 2011. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah apparently. Yeah I mean there’s a lot of 2011 casual sexism in this movie. Yeah. You know, some of the just girls with their butts out and the whole street racing scenes and, and that sort of stuff, and you just kind of have to it’s a take the good with the bad in this moment.
Greg: Justin Lin talked about this in his, in his commentary where he said, we know there’s no place on the planet where there are race cars and girls that dress like this.
Joe:
Greg: But you know, we’re just trying to create a heightened reality here. Yeah. But you know, this movie is more than what it looks like. It is here. They you know the intention behind all this. It’s actually a little bit more nuanced than what we’re showing. And I don’t know that they succeed and not everywhere. Not everywhere. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. Totally. I mean, when we get to our important questions, this is why we’re bad people for loving this kind of movie. Like, these are the moments where you can’t really justify the choices that are made. Right? I accept any criticism of my love of this movie based on the sexism and the stuff and all of that.
Greg: Totally fair. Yeah.
Joe: And yet, I love this movie, and you’re right and I’m wrong. And also, I’m going to watch this movie a thousand more times and love every second of this ridiculousness. That is what this movie is.
Greg: So the train heist alone, the rooftop chase in Rio. Amazing.
Joe: Yeah. Again, the last scene.
Greg: Are you. You’re skipping to the end.
Joe: I, I just have to say I won’t skip through. But like, that last scene pays off. We’ve talked about in movies where sometimes, like the best action sequence is not the last one, but like sometimes in the middle, like I think of like The Gray Man and those sorts of movies.
Greg: Sure. You’re talking about the vault heist at the end?
Joe: Yeah, yeah, the vault heist at the end has taken everything to this point. Turned up the volume. Yes. Enough.
Greg: More than expected.
Joe: It’s longer and more protracted. Like it just takes everything. And it just does that. Yeah. Like you said, turning the volume up to the point where you’re questioning reality but also just enjoying it perfectly. And that’s what you want. And the final scene. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s everything that I’ve ever wanted in the final scene of a movie, of any action movie is to like, have that payoff where you feel like, okay, we got here and it met the moment of what the movie was building to.
Joe: Yeah. And so they nailed it for me on this 100%.
Greg: So we are in a part of the movie now where they just keep kind of like ratcheting up the stakes.
Joe:
Greg: They find out that the rock is after them. They find out that the safe is at the police department, that all the money is in, that they’re trying to steal the $100 million in it. They have to figure out how to get into that safe. And so they have to start just kind of selling all of these different things.
Greg: And this movie does a very good job. They’ve sold Reyes.
Joe:
Greg: The man who owns all of Rio. They’ve sold the bad guy.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Here is them selling the rock.
Clip: Hobbs is the leader of the elite task force for the DSS. So he’s good. When the FBI wants to find somebody, that’s who they call. He never misses his mark. This guy is. He’s Old Testament blood, bullets, wrath of God. That’s his style.
Joe: All right, now he’s hunting us.
Greg: How does he know this. He’s looked at his file for three seconds. Yeah. He must have just known that from when he was in the FBI or something.
Joe: Yeah. That’s what we have to assume.
Greg: Right. That line must have been taken directly from a Steven Seagal movie.
Joe:
Greg: So then Ludacris, Tyrese and Paul Walker have a little remote control car at the police station to check out the safe. Tyrese has had a hilarious scene trying to get that remote control car in there. He gets a moment that was controversial while they were making it. Should this moment be in a fast and Furious movie? Let’s listen to Tyrese.
Clip: Who are you, sir? Special agent O’Conner, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. He says Caucasian. I said tan no tan.
Greg: Long pause for laughter.
Joe:
Clip: Look, I’m working this case and I got some evidence here too.
Greg: Apparently. Neal Moritz, the producer of the movie, just kept telling Justin Lin, this doesn’t feel like Fast and Furious. And he was like, we get to decide what it is. It’s the fifth movie.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: This thing is growing and becoming something different and giving Tyrese scenes like this, it’s pretty fun.
Joe: That’s basically the first moment where you get to see what Roman will become. Throughout the rest of the movie or throughout the rest of the movies. Yeah. You know, he’s a little bit of like, the mouth fast talking. Yeah.
Greg: The mouth. Yeah. That’s what they call him when they’re getting the team together.
Joe: Yeah, I like that scene. It’s I know it’s it’s pretty silly. And,
Greg: And nobody is complaining about this scene. Yeah. Nobody’s complaining about Tyrese being funny. So they get this remote control car with a camera in it, and they start looking at it, and now they have to sell the safe.
Clip: There’s bingo. What is that? Six by six, eight by 12, seven by 12ft with 18 inch thick steel reinforced walls with an insulated copper core to protect against thermal laughs. A class three electronic lock with a sure fire griffin with tumbler and a biometric scanner. Ten tons, a top of the line security. I want to know how you know all that.
Clip: I had a life before you knew me. Oh, come on, let’s just leave it at that. I.
Joe: I faked.
Greg: Hand waves. The fact that this guy in the second movie just had, like, a car shop did me.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, chop shop. That was cutting up stolen cars. But don’t worry about any of that.
Greg: There’s so much hand-waving in this.
Joe: Movie and the fact that a spoiler for this movie, they have to get that exact safe.
Greg: Right?
Joe: Delivered, I guess the next day, maybe two days later, I’m like, yeah, it’s probably what, $500,000 safe?
Greg: Sure. Yeah. Stone.
Joe: Amazon. It just gets delivered to them. Yeah. In their secret lair.
Greg: And wasn’t their thing. Like, how did you guys get this here? And they’re like, don’t worry about it.
Joe: That’s basically like, what you need to do with the plot of this movie is like, don’t worry about it. It’s here now. Yeah.
Greg: 100%. Justin Lin in the commentary, which should be a drinking game. Yeah. Every time I say that in this episode, he said that they really tried to figure out how they could explain stuff like that and eventually just abandon it, he said. It doesn’t matter. People are either along for the ride or they aren’t, and I am, so I don’t care.
Greg: But he said there was a moment where Tyrese grabbed like a bag of money from that first counting place that they went to when they lit the money on fire, they did like they had this idea that Tyrese was going to grab some of the money to explain the bankrolling of everything, and then he was like, let’s, who cares?
Joe: Yeah, I’m actually really glad they went with, yeah, who cares? Like, yeah, we are hitting the point where this is just what happens and asking those questions is pointless to the plot of the movie. Like we aren’t dealing in reality, we’re just along for the ride, right? Which is perfect.
Greg: It’s understandable that somebody would ask those questions in trying to figure out these movies. But you know what? Don’t.
Joe: Yeah, don’t don’t be that guy. Don’t be.
Greg: Seriously, don’t be that guy. So then the Rock tries to arrest them and it doesn’t go well because Vin Diesel has endeared all of Brazil to pull guns on American government agents.
Joe: Apparently, yes.
Greg: But when that scene happens, that is when we get to hear a couple different rock accents in one scene.
Joe: So let’s listen to this.
Clip: The Toretto.
Clip: You’re under arrest. That sounds like a rock.
Clip: I feel like I’m under arrest. How about you, Brian?
Clip: No, not a bit.
Clip: Not even a little bit. I’ll just give it a minute. It’ll sink in.
Greg: What is that accent? It’ll sink in. Where is the rock from all of a sudden?
Clip: It’s not even a little bit. I’ll just give it a minute. It’ll sink in.
Joe: It’s what it’s like Georgia all of a sudden. Yeah.
Greg: The rock is amazing in this movie, in that they really just kind of let him.
Joe: Yeah. Do what you gotta do.
Greg: I don’t think I clocked it in 2011. I didn’t either, but it my 15th viewing of this movie.
Joe: So hold on.
Greg: Where is this came from?
Joe: Is this where they have the fight scene between Vin Diesel and the Rock?
Greg: No, it’s that’s later. But that is the next action scene that happens in this movie. So what do you think of the Hobbs versus Dom fight in this movie?
Joe: Honestly, I of live without it and this movie, but it’s one of those and you don’t get these much anymore where basically Vin Diesel wins the fight but then gives up. Yeah. And then allows them all to be arrested, which because he could have killed the Rock and instead of killing him, he just he hits the wrench next to his head.
Joe: Right. And they all just get arrested. Yeah. And it’s that’s kind of silly to me. Weirdly, this is the one scene in this movie just.
Greg: It’s that silly idea. Yeah.
Joe: That I’ve always struggled with. Yeah. Yeah, sure. They just like give up and. Okay, you got us the Rock and we’re going to get arrested and go back to the United States and. Right. Whatever is going to happen now, we know what happens is that they get attacked by the bad guys. And, you know, the Rock’s team gets killed.
Joe: And then the Rock as well will help them take down the bad guy in the final scene.
Greg: Because they helped him.
Joe: Yeah, because they helped him and. Right, you know, saved him from being killed and all of that.
Greg: They pull him up. Vin diesel pulls him up off the ground with the most amazing Ben-Hur shake I’ve ever seen in my life. You know, in the Ben-Hur shake.
Joe: Is that the, like, grab the forearm.
Greg: And, yeah, they grab each other’s forearms needlessly. It’s like the hardest way to get somebody up off the ground.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So stupid. And yet, like, that’s a sweet Ben-Hur shake right there.
Joe: That’s awesome. I did a thing where, when I was watching that fight scene, I was like, how many times do they have an equal amount of times where they hit each other? Because I think that was from Hobbs and Shaw, where they, when they fight each other, they have to like a you may have mentioned this like they were contractually obligated to like one person couldn’t have more.
Joe: Yeah. Damage on the other.
Greg: That happened here as well.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Meeting after meeting. Apparently they decided that Hobbs would probably be Vin Diesel in a fight, but Vin Diesel was fighting. He was fighting for something. Hobbs was just doing his job. And so because of that, Vin Diesel got the upper hand because he was more passionate about what was going on.
Joe: But gives himself up at the end. So again, right, this is my least favorite scene in the movie. Yeah. Fight scene.
Greg: Right. But gets us right to the ambush on Hobbs convoy. Rocket launchers.
Joe: A lot of guns in this.
Greg: Movie compared to other movies.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: People just kind of getting mowed down by guns and fast five.
Joe:
Greg: Surprising.
Joe: Yeah. Surprising. Not my favorite part of it but like yeah I feel like they could have figured out a different way to get to the same end. But right again I’m not too mad about it. But it’s not my favorite part of this movie.
Greg: But it was a little bit jarring. Like what are Vin Diesel and and Walker doing? Just like mowing down bad guys with guns?
Joe: Dude. Yeah.
Greg: Something didn’t feel right about it.
Joe: Yeah, but it does get us to the best ending action scene of any Fast Furious movie.
Greg: So the whole team basically says, we cannot do this. We have to get out of town. And Vin Diesel says, I think we should still do it. His whole team disagrees. And then the Rock says, I’ll ride with you, Fredo.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then everyone’s like, all right, well, if we get this guy.
Joe: Yeah, that.
Greg: Changes the tide, I guess.
Joe: I mean, and that’s an awesome, like, classic. I don’t know how to put that trope into the trope lightning round, but that moment and so perfect in every way. Yeah, yeah it does. You need it. You need them to, like, partner together.
Greg: Yes.
Joe: The good guy doing something bad, the semi bad guy doing something good. Like it’s perfect in every way.
Greg: 100% perfect. Yeah. Much like the booms in the beginning of the movie.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: They know what they’re doing. So that leads us to the vault heist. The Rock drives his truck through the police cement wall.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then Vin Diesel and Paul Walker connect their cars to the vaults.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And they start pulling a real vault. I don’t know if it was like a real vault, but they built a vault and they were actually pulling something behind their cars.
Joe:
Greg: Which is probably not something that would happen now in movies.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. It would all be CGI. Yeah. This is the thing that cemented my love of the Fast and Furious averse. Yeah. Yeah. You know I seen the fourth one. I distinctly remember watching this scene going, there’s no way that they could do this. And then having this moment with myself of like, are you kidding me right now?
Joe: Yeah. You’re wanting realism at the end of this movie. This movie. Yeah. And then I was able to just sit back and watch one of the best ending action scenes you’ll ever see. Yeah, it’s beyond ridiculous, and it’s perfect. And every single way. I’ve watched it again, and I think I told you this one before we started recording, but I watched this scene twice.
Joe: Yeah, I watched it all the way through. Yeah. And I went right back to when the wrong last through the wall. And I was like, I gotta watch it again. Totally. Every time I watch it, it’s perfect.
Greg: It’s so good, so good. You hate the Fast and Furious movies. You should watch this scene because this safe keeps hitting police.
Joe: Cars and.
Greg: Making them just, like, flip in the air in every direction. Always. It is.
Joe: So awesome. It shows what they can start to do with cars and the way that they can. Like, manipulate things. And they split up and then they like stop and like people crash into it and yeah, things are cut in half. Yeah. With the chains. Everything about it like there’s nothing that I would change in these scenes totally at all.
Greg: Well let’s talk about Spiro Risottos then. The guy who was the second unit director, who was putting all of the other scenes that weren’t the train scene together. This guy has an also pretty incredible list of movies that he’s worked on. Have you ever seen The Peacekeeper with Nicole Kidman and George Clooney? Directed by. I think it’s Mimi Letter.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: We will get to The Peacekeeper.
Joe: I love that for sure.
Greg: He did that movie. He did Bad Boys too. So he’s got some Michael Bay in there. Expendables one. He did Total Recall the remake and then he did fast and Furious six. Furious seven. He did Captain America Civil War. All right which is going to come into play later on. He did Kong Skull Island. Have you seen that?
Joe: Awesome. I have not seen that one. I have seen the Kong versus Godzilla one. Yeah.
Greg: Which is yeah, pretty great.
Joe: So dumb and awesome in every way.
Greg: Kong Skull Island is the most beautiful, stupid movie you’ll ever watch in your life. Okay? It is so.
Joe: Beautiful.
Greg: He did Fast and Furious eight fate of the furious. He did Transformers last night, which is, I think the Marky Mark one.
Joe:
Greg: He did 21 bridges.
Joe: Oh I haven’t seen it but I’ve wanted to like a million times.
Greg: Yeah. I should just let you know it’s already been voted upon. We will be getting the 21 okay.
Joe: That might be our next movie. Who knows.
Greg: So bad boys for life. Another movie we will be getting to Fast and Furious nine, The Gray Man.
Joe: Yeah. Buried the lead on this one. Yeah, one of the greatest movies ever made, the Gray Man. Yeah.
Greg: This shouldn’t be a surprise because he worked on Captain America Civil War and the bridges. So it’s the same guys. Anyways. Spiros Risottos. Come on. Thank you for what you did.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: You have brought 14 years of joy and counting to our lives based on this movie and many of the movies that you have made since. So the people who are like making safes just take out banks. And only cop cars are hurt in this scene. As far as we know, there’s that one time where they are turning really quick, and Justin Lin really wanted the vault to roll.
Greg: And they were just like, we can’t do it. You can’t have a real safe and have it do that. And then when they did this stunt it accidentally rolled.
Joe: Awesome. So awesome.
Greg: And so he got what he wanted. How about can we vote for best action scene.
Joe: Oh absolutely.
Greg: All right. So we got prison bus escape train heist rooftop chase Hobbs versus Dom fight. Ambush on the Hobbs convoy. And the vault heist.
Joe: I love all of them. Yeah. I got to go with the vault heist. Yeah, it was something that I had never seen before. Yeah, yeah, at that time, when I saw it, I think it cannot be undersold in this one. And fast six. Yeah. Real car crashes. There is CGI in it that you can kind of see around the edges of it, of course.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: But real car crashes happening, which I just, I’m such a sucker for.
Greg: Yeah. You feel.
Joe: It? Yeah. Yeah. And that scene, I had never seen anything like it in a movie. And any time I have a moment like that where I’m like, oh, I haven’t seen this before. That’s always going to take the cake for me.
Greg: They have so many cop cars going after them and they’re taking them all out with the safe eventually. It was basically the end of that movie The Blues Brothers. You remember that movie The Blues Brothers? Oh yeah, 200 Cop Cars. Yeah, Chicago after them. It was basically that it was comical in every way.
Joe: Except.
Greg: It was also the best action scene I’ve ever seen in my life.
Joe: Absolutely. Yeah. Blues brothers is one of those movies I’ve seen a million times. Totally. If it’s on. I am duty bound to watch it to the end. I don’t care where I am at the beginning, middle and I’m watching that movie. I remember the first time I saw it, I was back with like my cousins back and like Boston I’m watching it and I could not believe what I was seeing.
Joe: Yeah. Is this a real movie? It almost isn’t. Is this what movies are? You know, because I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. It’s one of those movies that, like, I needed to be an adult to watch because I was like 13 at the time, and I didn’t understand what they were trying to do.
Greg: I don’t know if being an adult was the answer.
Joe: There a fair.
Greg: Fair, yeah, I completely agree. I love that movie. I also really love that soundtrack.
Joe: I just want to say with that, yeah, the heist scene. Yeah, it is so good. Like, I cannot underscore this enough of like what they’re able to do.
Greg: You have scene you’re saying was good.
Joe: The heist, the two cars driving it. There are some glaring continuity flaws.
Greg: Really? Like what?
Joe: The biggest thing I notice is Paul Walker’s car at one point has his front windshield completely smashed in. It does? Yeah, it does early on in the scene. Then he pulls up at the end to save Dom, and his windshield as they drive away and as he pulls up is completely fine. So it’s stuff like, are you sure.
Greg: It wasn’t the back windshield that they shot? I’m.
Joe: I’m sure. Okay, okay. Cuz I again watched it twice.
Greg: Yeah. I’m so sorry to question you.
Joe: Yeah, I’ll never do that again. Okay. But thankfully. Yeah. And then you have the ridiculousness of Vin Diesel driving his car now. So with the vault behind him and the gnaws, and then he’s able to, like, steer it into cop cars as they’re coming at him. It’s so good. It’s one of those, like, I really think everyone should stop in 15 minutes and watch the scene.
Joe: Like, as soon as we’re done recording this episode, I’m going to watch that scene. It’s so good. It’s so fun.
Greg: Can I read to you my notes? When it gets to the point where he is pulling the vault on his own and he has to use the NAS?
Joe: Absolutely. Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah.
Greg: I just kept typing it because I was so excited about it.
Joe: Yeah, it’s magic. Apparently. Can do anything you want. I don’t know if it’s the same Nitro guy from LA.
Greg: Oh, that’s a good question. I’m so glad you brought that up because there wasn’t, there’s only one guy in all out all of LA who sells that.
Joe: But.
Greg: There was something sort of alluding to it, and that is when the rock is looking at the train heist scenario. He sees something stuck in the train, like a clue. And, here’s what he says.
Clip: As we cover works, I want a list of every place within 50 miles that distributes compressed gas. 6% of manifest.
Greg: Every place within 50 miles, which probably isn’t how they do distances. Yeah, in Rio, but whatever.
Joe: Yeah, don’t worry about it.
Greg: So they’re going to narrow it down that way. I don’t feel like that work really paid off for them. Now this only works when there’s only one guy that does those kinds of things. I agree with you. Vault heist is the best action scene. I also think this movie is bigger than the sum of those six scenes.
Joe: Agreed.
Greg: Those scenes put together create something bigger than the sum of its parts, which is incredible. I mean, Prison Bus is like two minutes in.
Joe:
Greg: Train heist ends at 17 minutes in. I mean like it it sets it up pretty early. I want to say that this movie is beautiful. The cinematographer, Steven Windham, did a great job. I think this is the best poster for a fast and Furious movie. Fast five. Probably the most beautiful one. Those shots of Rio, or I think better than anything else I’ve seen in these movies.
Greg: But Joe, we’ve spent quite a while explaining what this movie is, but there’s a chance that I some people haven’t seen fast five weird. And so let’s pretend that is 2011 and they’re walking down the.
Joe: Halls of.
Greg: Blockbuster, which I think was still around in 2011. If not, they’re getting some DVDs from Netflix.
Joe:
Greg: Netflix streaming had just started. They need to pick up a box of these shelves at the, at a video store and see if this is a movie. They want to watch. That’s right. I think it’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: It’s the back of the box. Dom Toretto, Vin Diesel and Brian O’Conner Paul Walker are on the run from the law and the most violent criminals in Brazil. Instead of laying low, they plan the biggest heist of their career so they can retire to a beach somewhere in the sun. The twists and turns or have you guessing all the way up to this shocking final scene.
Joe: This film goes into overdrive and pushes the pedal to the metal with tight action scenes ravaging the city. Who will be left standing and who will fall by the wayside. Wow.
Greg: Pedal to the metal gets right. Where are we? In under drive for the first four movies.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, okay.
Greg: All right. Joe, that is a perfect marketing description of this movie. But let’s get real here. Let’s get honest, what with Joe’s guy. Tucker’s real back in the box. Say.
Joe: All right, the real back of the box is this is the best of the Fast and Furious movies, period. Stop. It is ridiculous in all the ways you’d expect, but the stakes also feel raised and attainable. Utilizing the time honored trope of getting the band back together fast. Five is a perfect action movie, and to be revered as more than it is.
Joe: Trust us, this is pure fun and knows that all gas and no break, all NAS and no nitro. That’s my joke. Just for you.
Greg: That’s an incredible I love it, I love it. All right, Joe, should we get to the box office and the reviews of fast five?
Joe: Let’s do it.
Greg: They spent $125 million on this movie, which I think is about $40 million more, $45 million more than they did in the fourth one. This movie made $209 million domestically for 16 international, for a haul of $626 million. This was basically the beginning of modern day blockbusters. This really set the scene for what the 20 tens were going to be.
Greg: Yeah, I think it’s important to note that this movie made twice as much internationally as it did domestically. Wesley Morris, great writer for The New York Times, he wrote for The Boston Globe. When this came out, he won the Pulitzer Prize based on a collection of his writings. One of those writings was his review of fast five.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: Honestly, I have it all right in front of me right now. I would read you the entire thing, but he basically just talks about how this is a truly diverse group of people getting along, roasting each other, and going on some adventures. That’s the gang. They get back together, and it was unlike movies back then, TV shows were like this, movies weren’t.
Greg: And you said, this is the most diverse group of people in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a really interesting piece. You should find it on The Boston Globe. When it comes to what the critics said about this movie, remember that for Fast and Furious, the fourth movie, it had a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Joe: And it had a.
Greg: 67% audience score, really low compared to. And I don’t really see a discernible difference between what that movie was and what this is, other than this one’s bigger and better.
Joe:
Greg: But still they’re basically.
Joe: They’re very close.
Greg: Two parts of a whole.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But in 2011 what do you think the critics score.
Joe: For.
Greg: Fast Five was.
Joe: Joe obviously feels like a 70 which is an our movie is why we’re talking about it.
Greg: Yeah, it really does.
Joe: It really does. I feel like it’s probably like an 85, 86.
Greg: It’s lower than I thought I was going to be. It’s a 79.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Which in 2011, I remember checking the site and thinking that is ridiculously high for a Fast and Furious movie.
Joe:
Greg: And what do you think the audience score is?
Joe: I’ll put that at 85, 87, 87. Okay. Yeah.
Greg: Moira MacDonald from the Seattle Times reviewed this. Let’s start with our hometown paper. She says as a moviegoer, there are times when you want to say Jane Eyre, and then there are times when a movie about really large men who drive cars really fast is just the thing. Fast five is that latter movie and then some.
Joe: I agree 100% with that. Yep.
Greg: The new Yorker says Johnson’s skin looks as though it’s been slathered in butter. His enjoyment is infectious and keeps the movie speeding along. Oh, a lot of credit for. Yeah, Dwayne Johnson, but he is right about the butter. There is so much coconut butter going on.
Joe: There’s a lot. I mean, spoiler alert to like, our inexplicably wet streets is inexplicably wet. Dwayne The Rock Johnson all right.
Greg: Salon.com. That force of chaotic in in satisfiable desire that Freud called the ID. Well, he has got a D.
Joe: Wow.
Greg: Is much closer to the service in a movie like Fast five than ever before in action cinema history. And part of Lynn’s peculiar genius is that he barely tries to conceal it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Totally true, USA today says. Who do? The fourth sequel to The Fast and Furious would not only refuel a flagging franchise, but lead the pack as best of the bunch?
Joe: Yeah, fair.
Greg: Wesley Morris, as part of his Boston Globe review, said, Fast Five is so far the most honest Hollywood movie of the year and also the most fun.
Joe: I agree with that. Like, this is a fun movie.
Greg: And they’re not trying to make it anything else.
Joe: Yeah, they just they wanted to make a fun movie. They made a fun movie and it totally translates melodramatic everything. Yeah.
Greg: Bonkers action everything.
Joe:
Greg: Peter Travers and rolling Stone said Fast five will push all your action buttons and some you haven’t thought of. So what if you hate yourself in the morning?
Joe: Peter Travers I don’t hate myself at all. Yeah.
Greg: Joke’s on you. And this is by far my very favorite. Empire magazine said this episode has the highest velocity and the lowest IQ yet. See it on the biggest, loudest, dumbest screen you can find.
Joe: Nailed it, nailed it. Drew.
Greg: All right, Joe. Oh, my gosh, I’m excited about this. Are you ready to get in the drinking games?
Joe: I am so ready. All right.
Greg: Let’s do it.
Joe: We have our stock drinking games. And again you don’t need to be drinking alcohol. It could be drinking water coffee soda.
Greg: But assign a single drinking game to somebody else in the room. Yes. So whenever the thing happens, you have to tell them to take a drink. That’s the.
Joe: Game. So silent helicopter. No, we don’t have helicopters in.
Greg: This interesting.
Joe: Helicopter shot. Clearly shot on a helicopter.
Greg: Yeah, totally.
Joe: We do have push it in and enhance a couple different places, like when the band is getting back together. Yeah. And when they’re talking about the Rock and his gang, we have people sharing a slow motion look in the middle of chaos. It’s awesome. No silent suffering or ringing in the ears. What?
Greg: How dare you? They do.
Joe: Wait. Did I miss.
Greg: It? You totally missed it. And this is like, the crowning achievement of this movie.
Joe: Oh. I’m highlighting it right now.
Greg: It’s when they attack Hobbs, when they’re taking, Vin Diesel’s crew to jail. The rocket launcher hits them, right? Yeah. And they fall out, and there’s ringing in the ears, silent, suffering.
Joe: That’s right. Damn it, I missed that.
Greg: Perfect.
Joe: It is perfect. Yeah. I don’t know how I missed that. Anyway, we do have that. We also have an opening credit scene where it locks into place with the sound and the little mic. Whatever the exit sound is on that outro, take.
Greg: A drink for.
Joe: Both. We have some flashbacks to the fourth movie When Lady Dies air quotes around it.
Greg: Yep, I.
Joe: Could not have this one in there, but I do have the kind of CGI close calls just because there are a few moments. Very kind of. Especially when I watch these, I usually watch them on my computer. Not the greatest graphics. And so you can really feel they’re the CGI. Yeah. Low scores.
Greg: There’s like 1500 I think. Yeah. CGI shots in this movie.
Joe: It’s pretty straight but it is.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like danger enhancement stuff. The biggest one that reminds me of like the previous decade is when Dom abandons his car at the very end and it’s about to, like, ricochet back, from the vaults when he jumps out and the car goes backwards. That’s. Yeah, clearly like a CGI close call kind of scenario.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Great. Bad shots all over the place when there’s guns. Yeah. And explicable wet the rock. Yep. I don’t have, give us the room or Interpol in this. Although Interpol could be what the rocks. Yeah. Group is from. So you could. That’s kind of like a dealer’s choice on that one, so.
Greg: Right, right.
Joe: I have a lot of drinking games, as usual. Yeah, but I will toss it to you. Greg swineherd, what is one of your first drinking games?
Greg: Anytime they say, Toretto. Oh.
Joe: I have every time I say Dom. Okay, I.
Greg: See different people in the room.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: They both take a drink if they say Dom Toretto.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: Every time they say family, which isn’t very many times in this movie.
Joe: It’s not as much as you would think. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think I have the bad one. Okay. Oh no I lied I absolutely have Family Day and Big caps. I have anytime you see cars and they’re driving and then they like one of them like swerves into another lane and then back in, take a drink needlessly. Needlessly.
Greg: I love it any time. Hobbs, this crew is doing military hand signals are like two finger points. Take a drink. Two finger points is a big. We should start a band called Two finger Points.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I have, car crashes. That should kill you, but don’t take a drink. So any.
Greg: Time we see the cross necklace that makes its way through every movie in the series.
Joe: That is such a good one. I have. Anytime you hear a car sound and you know that Dom Toretto is driving that car, I a drink.
Greg: Any time someone in this movie jumps through a window, a wall or a roof.
Joe: Oh, hey, God, you drink are hydrate yourself before that if you’re drinking alcohol. Because that one is a lot I have. Anytime you have shots of the Jesus statue, take a drink. Oh, that’s.
Greg: Really.
Joe: Good.
Greg: Any time somebody literally says one last job.
Joe: I have anytime there’s a hero shot. So like shot from below, especially Vin Diesel gets a lot of this. And then take two drinks of it, like moves in. There’s so many of those on the Rock, but especially Vin Diesel. Like I have it as Vin Diesel hero shots.
Greg: Something I didn’t mention. And I don’t know if this is something that like a party would notice as they were watching this movie, but any time they show Vin Diesel and the Rock face to face and they’re showing them from kind of a distance away, they totally hide that Vin Diesel is shorter than the Rock, and standing on a box, right?
Greg: It’s like on a TV show when one of the characters gets pregnant, but the character isn’t pregnant, so she’s always like standing behind a piano and then recently wearing, like, a super baggy sweatshirt. There’s a couple times in this movie where it’s like the Rock and Vin Diesel and Vin Diesel is he’s blocked by a car like, yeah, you can’t see that.
Greg: His butt is where, like, The Rock’s middle of his stomach is.
Joe: That’s on.
Greg: This is clearly standing on a box. So any time they are face to face, take a drink.
Joe: Awesome. I have conversations about family where there is soft focus and, like, soothing guitar in the background. Yeah.
Greg: When the rock is arresting or trying to arrest Dom and Brian, there’s a moment where no signal is given. Yet everybody in The Rock’s crew holds up their guns and cocks them. This is my favorite thing in movies when the bad guys henchmen are the good guys, henchmen all know at what moment to dramatically all grab their guns, lift them up, and cock them and point with.
Greg: No one has given that signal.
Joe: You would also think that this is an elite military crew that would have their guns ready to shoot. The second they breach the door. But nope, they got that cock up. Yeah, yeah, totally. I have any time. Hon is eating.
Greg: That’s really good. Okay, this one is not fair.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: This is for you to take a water break.
Joe: Okay?
Greg: But this was the hardest. I laughed during this movie. I had never noticed this before. Do you remember the scene where Dom goes to Elena’s house?
Joe:
Greg: And he, like, sees Elena’s dead husband pictures on the wall.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Oh, he’s there to pick up his necklace back. Yeah. In that scene which is, I don’t know 90s long. Dom looks at Elena seven times.
Greg: Which means when they’re not showing him in the scene, he turns away from her. And then when they cut to him, he turns and looks at her again. This happens seven times in the scene. Joe, what is it like to talk to Vin Diesel whenever you are talking? He turns away like literally turns his body away from you.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And then his seven times. It’s never been done before in Hollywood. It costs $185 million to make this movie. $20 million of those were to pay Vin Diesel to do this, I bet.
Joe: That’s amazing.
Greg: So whenever Vin Diesel turns and looks at somebody, take a drink.
Joe: Oh my God, that’s so much. This is why you listen to Great bad movie. Cause I have never noticed that in the million times I’ve seen this movie.
Greg: But I’m gonna see if I can find that scene and put it on our website.
Joe: Yeah, I have, take a drink any time Dom almost hit somebody. So Vin Diesel or Dom is. Yeah, hit somebody and doesn’t hit them, but hits the wall, hits the ground. Something else? Take a drink.
Greg: Absolutely. Any time a screen makes a bleeping noise as it’s like loading an image or scrolling the way no computer ever has.
Joe:
Greg: Take a drink.
Joe: Any time you question why the Rock’s shirt is so tight, take a drink.
Greg: How many times did you do that?
Joe: Every single time. He’s on screen.
Greg: Okay. So that’s that’s a pretty rough drinking game for some.
Joe: Yeah. It’s a rough drinking game for me because it, I feel like there was like some a spoof of like this movie basically. And they had a moment where it’s like and now the Rock is in or someone like the Rock. I was like, why is his t shirt so tight? And it’s just I have that in my head and it’s really distracting of why he’s wearing such a tight under armor shirt, quite frankly.
Joe: So totally, totally. My last one is and this is only happens once in it. Okay. But this is everybody in the room finishes you. You finish your drink when the rock says, I’ll ride with you, Toretto.
Greg: Solid. All right, Joe, let’s move on to Joe’s trope lightning round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie.
Joe: There are so many in this. So we have the person who’s about to kill the good guy gets shot, Dom is about to be shot, and then Brian saves him and I have the honorable man trope. Definitely have some color filters on third world or developing nations. These people are the best at something, so these are the best around.
Joe: Well, yeah, whatever. They are sort of revenge. As the driver of the protagonist. You have one last job? Yep. Friend or colleague or family member. Usually a person of color who dies early in the film.
Greg: Who dies early in the movie.
Joe: It was Vince when he dies. It’s not early in the movie. It’s kind of towards the end. But I kind of gave that one as okay, okay, lots of explosions on impact, lots of conversations in the middle of chaos or car chases. Kind of the action movie trope of really no women except for love interests or the mother.
Joe: And then we have a duffle bag full of money, and then you don’t have guns or duffel bags of guns, but that and then medical care from a loved one or a love interest kind of early in the film, if I’m remembering correctly.
Greg: All right, Joe, should we get to important questions?
Joe: More than anything, let’s do it.
Greg: Did fast five hold up then.
Joe: Yes. Yeah, 100%.
Greg: Does it hold up now?
Joe: I feel like it holds up almost as good, if not sometimes better, because of some of what we have gone to with movie making. And like the heavy reliance on CGI. And I know that I have trouble with CGI sometimes. I think my biggest challenge with it is I understand why it’s probably much cheaper and a lot easier to shoot some of these things, and you can have a lot more creativity and a lot more other stuff.
Joe: But real car crashes, real stunts, it just can’t recreate that. Yeah. CGI. Yeah. And so there’s pieces of it that feel like they hold up almost a little better because of that. Now I feel like there are other movies we can talk about more with with that, but I feel like there’s I haven’t quite figured it out, but I struggle at times with CGI heavy action scenes.
Joe: That take me out of the moment where I go, oh, that’s clearly just a CGI moment. Instead of like feeling the right, the grittiness of the moment, which is a weird thing to say about Fast Five, but in some ways I feel like it holds up better because of it.
Greg: Totally. It really did. Jumped the shark and that shark was a submarine in the eighth movie.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: These movies, I mean, Mission Impossible is kind of taking the baton from Fast five and Fast Six, and I mean, the only place you can look for incredible movies is in The Stunt man director movies, you know, like John Wick extraction. Yeah. So I think it does hold up now, but a little bit less.
Joe: Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think some of it is also like the script and the story and you start, as you said, you’ve watched this a lot. So I yeah, the story is pretty silly at times and pretty melodramatic and yeah, all of that. But what it’s so good.
Greg: Like in the beginning when Mia and Rosa are putting little baby Niko to bed.
Joe:
Greg: Baby Niko is wearing jeans and a button up shirt to bed.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That takes me out of the movie for a second. No baby is going to.
Joe: Bed in.
Greg: Jeans and a button up shirt. But my man Niko is.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Because this is fast five.
Joe: He’s got places to go. Apparently.
Greg: In this movie, how hard do they sell the good guy?
Joe: I feel like it’s mid like they do some a little bit of the classic like the rock and his team sell the good guy and the bad guys a little bit. Sell the good guy. But it’s not. Not that much. It’s not crazy.
Greg: It’s definitely there to show that it’s a great bad movie.
Joe:
Greg: Yeah. But how hard do they sell the bad guy.
Joe: Oh much much more. Yeah. And especially at The Rock’s character and his team aren’t the bad guys but they’re kind of antagonists you know. Sure. So they do a little bit of, of that. And so it’s definitely more so on the bad guy side for sure.
Greg: Why is there romance in this movie?
Joe: Joe has to have the world’s worst fake baby bump at the end.
Greg: And all leads up to that,
Joe: Yeah, that was the scene that took me out of it.
Greg: Not Nico in the beginning.
Joe: Not Nico in the beginning.
Greg: Jeans and a button up shirt.
Joe: I was like, I mean, I’m fine. I’m sure it was them walking on the beach. She’s pregnant, clearly holding a pillow under her dress to demonstrate that she’s pregnant.
Greg: She’s holding it so it doesn’t fall to the ground.
Joe: Yes, exactly.
Greg: Yeah, I agree, I’m rooting for Mia and Brian though. I like the relationship. Yeah. Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: I can’t think of a world where we’re not.
Greg: Yeah unfortunately there’s no getting around it. All right Joe next important question. Does Fast five deserve a sequel?
Joe: I think it absolutely deserves a sequel. Does it deserve five more sequels? Six more sequels?
Greg: No, no, it doesn’t get fast.
Joe: Six. Absolutely. It deserves that.
Greg: Yeah. And half of fast seven does it deserve a prequel?
Joe: No. But doesn’t it have a prequel? I think there is a low speed hilarious for fast Five, right? No, no.
Greg: What are you talking about?
Joe: There are two prequels. There’s low speed arrows between fast four and there’s another one, but maybe I’m.
Greg: There’s a five minute short that is the precursor to two fast two furious to explain how he gets over to Florida.
Joe: That’s right.
Greg: I think what you were trying to say was it deserved a 20 minute short film written and directed by Vin Diesel.
Joe: Yes, that is what it does deserved, and I will watch every single one of those movies.
Greg: Right? That somehow takes place between Fast and Furious four and Fast and Furious five. It’s all in that bus.
Joe: Yep.
Greg: It’s like a play.
Joe: Yeah. So one man all in his head.
Greg: It’s called Glengarry Glen dum.
Greg: And it makes no sense.
Joe: But it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever seen.
Greg: And it somehow has Letty in it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right. Should this movie have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars?
Joe: No, I can’t, I can’t even imagine a world where this movie is nominated.
Greg: Okay, I disagree, this is better than eight of the ten movies nominated. All right, Joe, next important question. How can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Joe: This is one of the rare moments. This is like a chef’s kiss. No notes moment for me. Okay, okay. I can’t think of anything I would want changed. You know, there are little things here and there, but this movie is near perfect in terms of what I am looking for in a movie. What about you?
Greg: I would take out the Gal Gadot harassment. I thought it was kind of dumb. Yeah. And you know, it was there to like, underestimate her greatness, but it still made me uncomfortable. And if it makes me uncomfortable, it shouldn’t be in the movie.
Joe: A great.
Greg: I do think we could fix this movie by making all of the action scenes twice as long.
Joe: Oh yeah. I’m in. I’m in on that. Yes, done.
Greg: And I think that they made a bad choice in limiting the amount of accents that the rock could have. Okay, let the rock be the rock.
Joe: I support this 100%.
Greg: So I think he should have had more accents. All right, Joe, very important question. What album is this?
Joe: I went back and forth, so I am on the fence. That’s potentially two albums for me. Okay. And I might need your help. Oh, okay. I have it either as Radiohead’s okay computer, which feels a little too heavy of an album. Yeah. Or this movie, even though I love this movie and that album.
Greg: But I like where you’re going with it. Yep.
Joe: Or it’s U2’s Rattle and Hum. Oh, in that kind of three, you know, you have Joshua Tree rattling home and then Achtung Baby. So kind of thinking of it in those three Ark greatest albums, three in a row, you know, fast four or fast five? Fast six.
Greg: Yeah, I’m struggling with Rattle and Hum because that’s like the worst of those three. And Fast Five is the best of the three.
Joe: Yeah. That’s kind of where I got stuck. Although yeah I do have to say for me Rattle and Hum was my gateway album and U2.
Greg: Sure. So it’s important for you.
Joe: It’s important and I love I really love that album.
Greg: I do too.
Joe: And so I’m leaning towards like in my notes, I have Rattle and Hum, but I was going back and forth all day.
Greg: I could easily say that Rattle At Home is one of the best albums. And I love it and I will own it for the rest of my life.
Joe: And like the song desire which that was the song. Yeah. Top five song for me. I’ve just like a great. Yeah, yeah. So I think I’m going rattle and hum.
Greg: I think it’s a good choice. I like rather than him a lot. Now that we talk about it, I mean you’ve got Helter Skelter. You’ve got Van Demons land. You’ve got desire. You’ve got Hawkman. It’s track five. Freedom for my people is it. When love comes to town. Is it Angel of Harlem.
Joe: It is all on the watch.
Greg: Of course it is. This is an album I can’t do this on. There’s like 17 songs on that album, right?
Joe: Yes, exactly. I think you can mic drop on the fact that you knew that there were 17 songs. Yeah. And it’s a weird album because it’s got songs from multiple albums, right? You know, some live stuff on it. So it’s not.
Greg: That I actually don’t count it as an album for them.
Joe: Yeah, it’s one of those where when I look at their all their albums, I do the same thing where I’m like, it’s kind of like a best of. In some ways. They make live.
Greg: Versions of their songs on that album are incredible.
Joe:
Greg: There’s some B-sides. You got Silver and Gold live for those of us that one of the deep cuts. What band is that? They put a live version of a B-side on their live album. That’s incredible.
Joe: I mean, this album is amazing. This is when they’re at their peak.
Greg: I love that choice for you. What song do you pick off of Rattle and Hum for our playlist? That great bad movies music.
Joe: I got to go desire because that song got me into U2. Yeah. And then when we became friends, because you were a little bit earlier on in me, and I remember a lot of our conversations, but like, I remember you talking about Achtung Baby.
Greg: I was so deep into U2 in those years. Yeah.
Joe: We could do a whole podcast on U2, so.
Greg: We totally could.
Joe: All right. What album is this for you.
Greg: So fast five is the movie in this series, it had progressed into pure perfection. They had really whittled away most everything except for Paul Walker’s big dumb face, but otherwise perfect as a band that I think of that had kind of like grown into its peak. I think this is the Beastie Boys, their communication all okay. It kind of been all over the place with their first three records.
Greg: People probably thought Check Your Head was going to be the best they could do, and then they were like.
Joe: I got you. Yeah, hold my beer for a second. And yeah.
Greg: Yeah, ill communication is just such. It is. They’re fast.
Joe: Five.
Greg: For me. It’s not their fifth record, but it is their fast five. So people probably didn’t think the Beastie Boys could get that good. And they they did it. They did. Check your head slightly better with ill communication.
Joe: That album again will be forever linked with us living together.
Greg: Yeah, totally.
Joe: We just listen to that so much. And then when we would do mixes, all the little like stuff that they threw in there, I remember like cutting stuff into like mix tapes that just randomly they would throw on their heads. Yeah. Is some of my favorite memories are you would be like, you got to listen to this transition and you just throw in like one little like two seconds snippet from one of their songs.
Joe: And it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. Or I would do the same thing of like in the middle of sabotage. I would put like, and then I put my dick in the mashed potatoes as, like the, like in the break and those moments in that and 1010 North Garden was so fun with that album.
Greg: So I’m trying to remember why we decided to start listening to records with just the surround speakers on and not the mains, but we started doing that, especially with Check Your Head. I remember that.
Joe: Yeah, I was know probably any good reason to it other than we probably thought it sounded better for. No, we were just.
Greg: Trying to be interesting. Yeah. Entertainment hadn’t been invented yet.
Joe: Yeah, I was well.
Greg: It’s come down to this, Joe. It’s time to rate this movie. Great bad movie. Good bad movie. We don’t need any other on our scale. What are you going to call this?
Joe: This is a great, bad movie. This is the greatest, great bad movie. Yeah. I can’t even come up with an argument that this is a good, bad movie. This is a great, bad movie. It is totally perfect in every way. How do you rank this one?
Greg: I call it a best bad movie.
Joe: Oh, I like that.
Greg: I think we have a new category.
Joe: I agree, I think as we said at the beginning of this, if you want to know what a great bad movie is, watch this movie. Yeah, totally give you everything that you would ever want. It’s stupid. It’s amazing. There’s stuff you haven’t seen and it is perfect in every way. Like, again, I just with a few minor tweaks here and there, there’s nothing I would change about any of the plot points.
Joe: Yeah, it is the zenith of our of our world. To me.
Greg: This movie is so good that we couldn’t put it on this show until we had a very special episode, and that is this one our first anniversary.
Joe: Absolutely.
Greg: So should we just agree that our anniversary episodes will always be as close to fast five caliber as possible?
Joe: Absolutely. So next year it’s fast six. No.
Greg: We’ll try and make our anniversary episodes. Always a best bad movie if we can.
Joe: Yes, absolutely.
Greg: One year in Joe.
Joe: We did an.
Greg: Incredible. And we’re moving on to super smart, mundane jobs next week.
Joe: Yeah that’ll be fun.
Greg: Launching a category. It’s going to be incredible. All right.
Joe: Well we did it. One year of conversations that need to be had. Again I don’t know why you ever need to talk about fast five. We just had the best conversation ever as though.
Greg: It’s been.
Joe: Talked. Yeah. Congratulations to you, dear listener, for hearing us.
Greg: And okay, that feels a little much like us.
Joe: Subscribe. Give us a good review. It all helps us.
Greg: Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for spreading the word about great bad movies. Give us a rating on whatever app you’re listening to us on. You can always find us at Great Bad movies.com. We post stuff to Great Bad Movies show on Instagram or you can talk to us there. We had some funny comments for our Jurassic Park episode.
Greg: Lee said. We spared no expense on that episode. Yeah, which is true.
Joe: Perfect.
Greg: And I just assumed that that meant that he was giving us the a okay on Great bad park. He was giving us his endorsement.
Joe: Right? Come to our new amusement park. Great bad park.
Greg: Mostly drinking.
Joe: Yeah. Mostly drinking.
Greg: All right. Well, as always, Joe, we should say spoilers for fast five.
Joe: Yeah, spoilers for fast five, you know?
Greg: Oh, my gosh, I just noticed the time and I realized that I should probably become fluent in Portuguese the way Mia did, just in case I need to flee the country after I do my own personal Fast and Furious four.
Joe: Oh that’s good. Anyway, I got to go too. I’m running late for my fitting for the world’s smallest t shirt, so.
Greg: That makes sense. And, you know, honestly, I need to go because I feel like you’ve only made it in this world once you decide to do one last job. And honestly, I haven’t done any jobs yet. Yeah. So I think in order to fix this problem, I’m going to need to begin my life of crime so I can end it in proper fashion.
Joe: Yeah, I think I mean, you mentioned one last job. I mean, I’ve got to get the gang back together again for one last job seven more times, but that’s okay.
Greg: So just the seven?
Joe: Yeah, it’s a seven.
Greg: You know what? I’m glad that you have something you need to do, because I was just. I’ve really been thinking a lot about baby Nico and how uncomfortable he must have been. And his jeans and button up shirt. So I think the responsible thing to do here is buy him a bunch of onesies to fulfill that need that I’m sure he had and didn’t get.
Greg: I mean, he’s 15 years old now in 2025, but, better late than never. So I’m going to go.
Joe: I think that’s that’s fair. I’ve got to go to I’m going to start a family while on the run from the law and also anger the largest mob boss in the city. It should be fine, though.
Greg: I’ve we’ve all been there.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Okay. Well, that works for me because I have lived a life largely without noise in my car. I feel like that needs to end here, and it needs to end now. So I’m going to go see that one guy in all of Seattle that can hook me up with the right kind.
Joe: Oh yeah, the are they the one that uses Nitro? I know that guy.
Greg: That nitro meth.
Joe: Yeah, I’ve got to go find a new motto. I guess I can’t live my life one quarter mile at a time anymore. So I’m, I’m kind of taking requests on what that’s going to look like, but probably something they’ll just anchor my character in this world forever. Maybe something to do with friends or family. Maybe, I don’t know.
Joe: We’ll see.
Greg: Mark Johnson solo work in progress. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, this is a safe place to really kind of figure that out.
Joe:
Greg: We’re all thinking it. I know you’re thinking it. Everyone out there is thinking it. Probably time for Greg to start using coconut butter on his skin. And I know what you’re going to say, that I should probably start working out and then do that. No, I think now the way to begin working out is start overly using coconut butter first.
Joe:
Greg: And then you’ll look like the rock. You don’t even have to start working out. I think that coconut butter is really what makes the rock the rock.
Joe: Yeah. That tracks.
Greg: So I gotta go get some of that.
Joe: Yeah I think you should. You’re gonna need a lot. I’ve got to go to. I’m taking a bus to prison. I sure hope no one crashes it on the way there so.
Greg: Everyone will live. Spoiler alert. It’ll be fun. We talked a lot about The Rock’s accent in this. I forgot to mention the main way that he distinguishes himself in this movie. He has a goatee and one of these movies. I don’t know if he has it in the other movies.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And I think it was a mistake that he did that.
Joe: I don’t know. I think you should grow a goatee if that’s where we’re going with this, though.
Greg: Well, I think I’m going to grow goatee, so I should go, but I think I’ll eventually decide it was a mistake. But you got to do one before the other.
Joe: Yeah, you got to put, you know, one foot in front of the other. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go put my money in a vault. I sure hope it’s safe at the police station. So we’ll see.
Greg: I think it’ll be fine. And I’m glad that you have to do that, because I. You know, I do actually have a bus driver license, but I’m not certified in bus rolling. And after watching this movie, I realized I should probably get that, so I’m gonna I’m gonna head out.
Joe: Yeah. That tracks. I’ve got to go jump off a bridge. So, after a train heist, so, you know, make sense of it.
Greg: Okay, well, if you’re going to do that, I think I’m gonna go rob a train.
Joe: Oh, okay. Well, I mean, if I see you there, I wave. Yeah. Okay, great. All right. Anyway, I’m out, so I’ll see you soon.
Greg: All right, well, I’m gonna go steal a vault with my car, and so that all works for me. I’ll see you soon.
Joe: Right there. Soon.
Greg: Happy anniversary.