On June 22, 2001, a slick, entertaining action movie hit theaters about robbers who happened to be very good drivers, spent their free time street racing and found themselves infiltrated by an undercover cop sent to catch them. Instead, he fell for one of them and bonded with their tough, laconic leader.
The movie cost $38 million, made a tidy profit and spawned a sequel. Then another. And another and another.
A quarter-century later, we are about a year and a half away from the 11th installment in the "Fast & Furious" franchise, a movie whose estimated budget could have financed the original 2001 film six times over.
Why has the budget ballooned so wildly? Well, because the "Fast & Furious" movies themselves have ballooned to enormous proportions. And that is an understatement.
The first movies in the series were relatively modest action films centered on driving and car stunts. The installments that followed featured globe-spanning cyber plots, nuclear submarines and, yes, even a trip into space. In a car. But we’ll get to that.
Yes, the "Fast & Furious" movies long ago detached themselves from reality and became showcases for gigantic action sequences with only the loosest connection — if any — to the laws of physics on planet Earth, the anatomy of the human body or basic common sense.
They are closer to cartoons than live-action movies, packed with elaborate effects, heroes who have long since acquired superhero-level abilities and durability and filmmakers who seem determined to push the absurdity as far as possible with every new installment. At this point, they are simply competing with themselves.
Who knows what they will come up with in the 11th movie, due in March 2028? We have already been to space, so what is left? Will Dom Toretto drive a Dodge Charger through a wormhole into another dimension? Perhaps one where Vin Diesel can act?
In any case, we are not here to tear these movies down. Well, maybe a little.
To mark 25 years of "Fast & Furious" and its proud, glorious stupidity, we picked the most unhinged action scenes the franchise has given us.
And yes, there is plenty of room for argument because there have been so many, and naturally some had to be left out. We also decided to start relatively slowly and escalate as we go. So perhaps it is better to call this "the dumbest action scenes we love," just to avoid a war in the comments. Either way, come with us into space and beyond.
The stars of 'Fast & Furious'
(Photo: Courtesy of yes)
10. A car flies onto a yacht, '2 Fast 2 Furious'
"Boat, car, boat — you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do?"
With the kind of sophistication that would come to define the entire "Fast & Furious" franchise, Roman Pearce, played by Tyrese Gibson, voices the thoughts of viewers watching the first sequel, where the laws of physics had already begun making way for a new governing principle: "Wow, that sounds cool, let’s try it. Wait, who said from the back, 'That isn’t possible in real life'? Jimmy? You’re fired."
And yes, the scene in which Roman and Brian, played by the late Paul Walker, launch a Chevrolet Camaro into the yacht of ruthless drug lord Carter Verone, played by Cole Hauser, now looks almost like a documentary compared with the total insanity of later installments.
But we are here to chart the escalation, so we need to start small. Relatively speaking.
And let’s set aside the fact that the point of flying the car onto the yacht was to save the glamorous agent Monica, played by Eva Mendes, whom Carter intended to kill, and that when you launch a car onto a yacht, it is not exactly a precision operation. The woman you are trying to save could just as easily end up with a bumper in her face.
It is "2 Fast 2 Furious," after all.
But never mind the details: boat, car, boat. What more do you need?
9. The vault chase through Rio, 'Fast Five'
All right, the escalation is happening faster than expected.
This time, Brian and Dominic Toretto, played by Vin Diesel, tear through the streets of Rio de Janeiro dragging behind them — on steel cables that somehow do not snap during the sequence, for reasons known only to God — a gigantic vault stuffed with cash.
A few innocent questions: How is it that no civilians are killed amid the chaos this stunt unleashes across the city, even when the vault smashes through a crowded bank branch? Did everyone happen to have feline reflexes that allowed them to leap out of the way a split second before certain death? Did they die off-screen? May they rest in peace.
And what about the countless bullets Rio police fire at Brian? Not one hits its target?
And how exactly can two cars, no matter how much horsepower they have, drag such an enormous, heavy block of metal at that speed?
Then there is the utterly implausible way Dom uses the vault like a wrecking ball as he speeds across a bridge, destroying one police car after another, somehow manages to jump from his own vehicle and then survives when the treacherous vault crashes down and sends the car flying.
There is really no point dwelling on it, especially because the most unbelievable thing happens after all the madness ends.
Agent Luke Hobbs, played by Dwayne Johnson, who had relentlessly pursued the group and just watched Brian and Dom destroy half the city with a vault tied to a cable, decides to give them another 24 hours to escape him — and perhaps destroy another city along the way.
A free lesson: Sometimes you do not need a multimillion-dollar budget and an army of stunt performers to create a wildly implausible movie moment. Sometimes all you need are four actors, a brief exchange of dialogue and screenwriters who have lost all hope and are now willing to write absolutely anything just to get it over with.
8. Dom saves Letty, 'Fast & Furious 6'
Here we have a highway chase that also involves a tank doing things tanks are not supposed to do, such as going extremely, extremely fast.
So for now, let us skip the session titled "Questions about the science-fiction nature of the action."
Questions such as how Roman jumps out of his car as it is crushed by the tank and lands on Brian’s vehicle without being smeared across the asphalt and dying instantly, or how he then somehow enters Brian’s car through the roof while both are moving.
A quick cut — and suddenly he is sitting safely inside, pleased with himself. A miracle in plain sight.
Luck is on your side, buddy! From 'Fast & Furious 6'
(Photo: Courtesy of yes)
But the centerpiece is the moment when Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez, is thrown from the tank and directly into Dom’s arms. Dom, meanwhile, climbs onto his moving car and jumps at exactly the right moment to save her.
Divine intervention? Sure, why not.
7. Cars parachute from a plane, 'Furious 7'
Well, three sequences in and we have already reached serious WTF territory.
This time: Follow me! We’re joining the paratroopers.
In this deranged sequence, members of Dom’s "family" parachute from a plane inside their cars so they can quickly reach a remote mountain road in the Caucasus, where they need to intercept a convoy transporting hacker Ramsey, played by Nathalie Emmanuel.
Drive there and set up an ambush like normal people? Please. You have clearly forgotten who we are dealing with.
And so the cars are attached to parachutes, reverse out of the aircraft and plummet toward the ground at ridiculous speed before — without, say, crashing into a tree despite being above a forested mountain road — landing on the highway and continuing the mission as planned.
Fine, maybe Letty, Brian and Tej, played by Ludacris, hit the occasional branch or rock. No big deal. Within moments, everyone is driving like ninjas along the neat Caucasus roadway.
That is what happens when you plan properly.
The most perfect moment in the sequence? Roman, quite reasonably, gets cold feet and decides to stay aboard the plane. Then Tej remotely deploys his parachute and sends him flying out anyway.
As Roman hurtles through the air, he frantically stomps on the brake pedal. With friends like these.
6. Driving through skyscrapers, 'Furious 7'
As our sixth-place pick also demonstrates, the filmmakers behind "Furious 7" were very fond of heights.
First we had cars falling from an airplane. Now we have cars jumping between skyscrapers.
More specifically, one car jumping between three Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi.
Why does it do that? Well, Brian and Dom have arrived to retrieve a powerful tracking device hidden inside the vehicle and, because reasons — yes, reasons, do not make this difficult — decide to start driving it around the high-rise penthouse where it is being stored, home to some wealthy prince and filled with members of the global elite attending a lavish party.
Then Deckard Shaw, played by Jason Statham, arrives. He is an archvillain who will eventually, in time-honored "Fast & Furious" tradition, become their buddy and a member of the "family."
To escape him, Dom decides simply to drive. Through the windows. Straight into the neighboring skyscraper, aided by the blast from a grenade Shaw fires at them.
It was all part of the plan. And then what happens, you ask? Well, the car’s brakes do not work, so Dom decides to jump it into a third skyscraper. And people got mad at us over one tiny assassination attempt in Qatar. Discrimination.
5. Redirecting a torpedo by hand, 'The Fate of the Furious'
You could argue that even before the eighth installment in the adventures of Dom Toretto and his friends, the heroes of the "Fast & Furious" saga had already become a kind of superhero team rather than ordinary human beings with an active death wish who happened to be good drivers.
But in "The Fate of the Furious," the entire franchise shifted into a higher gear — and by "higher," we mean "dumber" — with some of the most insane and unrealistic scenes ever seen in an action movie that does not also come with labels such as "science fiction," "fantasy" or "experimental."
And so we arrive at a scene in which Hobbs — yes, the agent who was a semi-antagonist to the group in the fifth movie and naturally became a beloved brother — redirects a torpedo with his bare hands while racing across a giant sheet of ice so it will not hit the "family" and instead strikes one of the villains’ vehicles.
The problem is not necessarily the torpedo’s speed, mind you. Torpedoes are not especially fast missiles.
The problem is that such a weapon is supposed to weigh more than a ton, making it wildly unlikely that any human being, even one built like Dwayne Johnson, could do such a thing.
Sorry, did we say "wildly unlikely"? We meant: What the hell is this?
4. Jumping over a nuclear submarine, 'The Fate of the Furious'
We are still in the same movie, No. 8. In fact, this happens shortly after the scene that came in fifth.
Now Dom and the gang are speeding across the ice while fleeing a nuclear submarine.
Honestly, we could stop there. But why would we? This is fun.
As they race away, the villainous cyberterrorist played by Charlize Theron fires a heat-seeking missile from the submarine.
Noble Dom tells the others to get away, turns around so the missile will follow him and then makes another turn to jump his car over the submarine so the missile will hit it instead.
Then, as the resulting fireball engulfs his airborne car — thank goodness for slow motion, which apparently gives him time to do this — he jumps out and survives, naturally.
Just another day at the office; from 'The Fate of the Furious'
(Photo: Courtesy of yes)
But we are not done. Another explosion creates another wave of fire. Dom is standing alone on the ice, seemingly seconds from death, when the family suddenly arrives from nowhere with impeccable timing, circles him with their vehicles and shields him from the searing heat.
No one is hurt. Not one vehicle has so much as a scratch. Even their hairstyles remain perfectly intact. Because everyone knows that a massive fireball caused by a nuclear submarine explosion is powerless against good hair gel.
3. Holding back a helicopter, 'Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw'
A slight detour from the main "Fast & Furious" series brings us to the spinoff "Hobbs & Shaw," designed to give the two title characters a chance to bicker for a while and then become "family."
Along the way, however, the movie also gives them a chance to star in action scenes of staggering absurdity, including the completely deranged sequence proudly sitting at No. 3 on this list.
For context, the good people at "MythBusters" once tested whether a person could redirect a torpedo by hand, as discussed in entry No. 5, and discovered that it was somehow possible — assuming the torpedo had been fired above water and the person trying to redirect it was exceptionally strong.
We are talking perhaps a fraction-of-a-percent level of possibility, but still.
On the other hand, because they are sensible people, the "MythBusters" team never bothered testing whether a person could throw a heavy metal chain from a flying SUV so that it would hook perfectly onto a helicopter hovering overhead, after which several additional SUVs could attach themselves to it — with perfect timing and while speeding down a dirt road — to keep the helicopter from lifting away.
And the grand finale? Hobbs grabs the broken chain and, with his bare hands, prevents the helicopter attached to it from escaping.
Do not worry. No brain cells were harmed during the making of this movie.
2. Car bungee jumping, 'F9'
Would you like a few highlights from this extremely credible sequence? With pleasure.
Ramsey, Tej and Roman race at insane speed across a rope bridge that is collapsing beneath them — and survive, with their car climbing the final stretch at a 90-degree angle.
Helicopters fire a barrage of missiles at Dom and Letty from, I kid you not, about 10 meters away — and miss.
A stealth aircraft catches Jakob Toretto’s car after it drives off a cliff. Jakob, Dom’s brother, is played by John Cena.
No one even bothers to explain, not with a single tiny shot, the mechanics of how any of this works.
Finally, to escape the missile-firing helicopters, Dom floors it and sends himself and Letty flying over a cliff. Somehow, the car gets caught on a metal cable, swings gracefully over the abyss, smashes into a rock wall hard enough to instantly kill anyone inside and then, in defiance of every known law of physics, vaults over the edge and lands safely.
At this point, the helicopters that had been firing missiles at them simply turn around and disappear, exactly when Dom’s car is finally disabled and there is no longer any way for him to escape.
Because that is how things work. The devil’s handiwork.
"Well, that was new," Letty says with a faint smile.
By which, of course, she means, "That was completely idiotic."
And with your permission, let us end with a YouTube comment that sums up the sequence, and really the entire franchise, perfectly:
When Dom gets an F in physics, it doesn’t mean Fail. It means Family.
1. Driving down an exploding dam, 'Fast X'
Appropriately enough, the first half of the double feature intended to conclude the "Fast & Furious" saga is overflowing with action scenes that are absurd, stupid and utterly glorious in both their absurdity and stupidity.
Where do we even begin? With the bomb rolling through the streets of Rome — a giant spherical bomb straight out of Looney Tunes so that, naturally, it can roll?
Because that really is a once-in-a-lifetime scene, especially since it ends with Dom launching his car into the air and crashing into a crane to knock the bomb into the river and save the Vatican.
Or perhaps we should choose the sequence in which Dom manages to make two helicopters tethered to his car crash into each other, then uses the resulting fireball to destroy the vehicles chasing him.
And this is one of the more believable scenes in the movie; from 'Fast X'
(Photo: Courtesy of yes)
No, no. Do not be childish. We are obviously choosing the magnificent scene in which Dom and his son drive down the side of an exploding dam at nearly a 90-degree angle, with half the car on fire, only to find themselves alive and well in the pleasant river water moments later. Happened to us once at Gan HaShlosha.
0. One small step for mankind, 'F9'
Yes, rankings like this generally try to avoid reaching No. 0. But we could not resist because this scene truly deserves both first place and this special ranking. Although perhaps you belong to the camp that says, "What they are doing here is high art." Hopefully not.
In any case, in "F9," Tej and Roman fly into space in a Pontiac Fiero. That is it. There is no punchline. That is what happens in the scene. It is the point of no return for the entire franchise. Perhaps for cinema itself. Perhaps for humanity. And with that, friends, we are done. There is truly nothing more to say. Farewell.