The 33 greatest Fast & Furious moments
Sep. 9, 2024Live life a quarter mile at a time
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Who among us lives life a quarter mile at a time? The Fast & Furious franchise, also officially known as the Fast Saga, is one of the biggest Hollywood franchises in history with nearly a dozen sequels and billions of dollars grossed at the box office. Surely, for such a storied franchise, these movies have to have a few iconic moments of its own. But what moments from the Fast & Furious franchise are actually deserving of iconic status?
After the first movie became a hit with its box office gross of over $200 million, Universal Studios launched a franchise that has impressively transcended language barriers and cultures to entertain the world. Turns out, having slick cars and a heroic dude touting the virtues of “family” is a franchise that appeals to everyone the world over.
To celebrate the ongoing success and evergreen appeal of the Fast & Furious series, we rank the saga’s 33 greatest moments.
To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca: I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship. In the very first The Fast & the Furious, Brian finally earns Dom’s trust and respect when he gets Dom out of dodge following the movie’s first street race. From here on, Brian rolls with Dom’s crew, with none of them wise to his true motives as an undercover cop. Between Vin Diesel’s forceful delivery and the overall hilarity that is the line itself, this line has imprinted itself among Fast & Furious die-hards ever since.
32. “20% Angel, 80% Devil” - Fast & Furious (2009)
After Letty’s offscreen “death” (later undone in a memorable post-credits scene from Fast & Furious 6), Dom is still in mourning for his late love when he meets the breathtaking Gisele, played by Gal Gadot in her star-making role and first appearance in the franchise. Despite Gisele’s overpowering come-ons, Dom stays true to Letty even in her absence. In a private moment at a rowdy party, Gisele flirtatiously compels Dom to tell her his dream woman, which he uses as an opportunity to remember Letty. The man might have rizz, but he’s also faithful.
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When Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham starred in their own Fast & Furious spin-off, the action brings them to Luke Hobbs' family home in Samoa. In their morning dawn stand-off with Idris Elba’s superhuman Brixton and his technically sophisticated army, Hobbs leads his brothers in a haka, a ceremonial dance in Māori culture before unleashing medieval hell on their butts. While Māori insist that the haka is not exclusively a warrior dance, Dwayne Johnson looks absolutely fierce when he stands at the frontlines.
For a saga so focused on family, it was a bold decision by the Fast & Furious franchise to introduce an estranged member of the Toretto family. Enter: John Cena, who eschews his known comic performances for a deadly serious turn as Dom’s lost brother - and F9’s main antagonist - Jakob Toretto. While F9 is loaded with cranked-up moments of awesome, from the movie’s climactic magnet truck chase to literally blasting off into space, the real heat of the story boils when Dom confronts Jakob in a standoff. Talk about blood being thicker than water.
It just might be one of the most consequential moments in all of the Fast Saga - and not a word is spoken. When Dom learns that the police are after him, he makes the painful decision to leave Letty behind and run off to Panama City. It’s a decision that will haunt Dom, as Letty winds up running illicit products for a crime lord only to end up dead. (And Dom learns much later: Letty took the job through Brian, who wanted to clear Dom’s name.) While the Fast & Furious movies are full of corny dialogue and blistering action, its best moments are actually the quiet ones where you know everything just by reading the looks on faces.
To uninitiated eyes, racing is racing. And the Fast & Furious saga has no shortage of screeching tires, billowing smoke, and exploding tanks of gasoline. But the 2006 sequel Tokyo Drift, the first movie in the main series to not star either Paul Walker or Vin Diesel (although the latter shows up in a cameo), introduces mainstream moviegoers to the fine art of drift racing, a unique form of street racing that is most popular in Japan. And through the eyes of the movie’s gaijin teen protagonist, Sean (played by a very 24-year-old Lucas Black), drift racing looks like a magical martial art yet to be discovered by the outside world. The movie’s dazzling introduction of drift racing and its distinctiveness from traditional speed racing in the states is why we all still bump Teriyaki Boyz from time to time.
Dominic Toretto has gone rogue. In The Fate of the Furious, the master hacker Cipher - played by Charlize Theron, in her first movie in the franchise - leverages Dom’s baby son against him by forcing him to work for her and retrieve a very valuable plot device. Eventually, this pits Dom against his own “Family.” In New York City, Dom’s crew, plus Deckard Shaw, corner Dom and harpoon his Charger like a pincushion. That’s not the only standout moment in the sequence, however. Just minutes earlier, Cipher controls a garage full of cars to stop her target.
For years, Han’s death in Tokyo Drift was deemed a freak accident, a consequence of a life tearing up the streets. But as it turns out, it was a targeted assassination. Just before the credits roll at the end of Fast & Furious 6, the series finally lines up its messy timeline to bring audiences back to a pivotal scene in 2006’s Tokyo Drift. Turns out, Han’s death in incoming traffic was a purposeful hit, with the driver being Deckard Shaw, brother to Fast & Furious 6 villain Owen Shaw. Out for revenge, Deckard T-bones Han as a warning to Toretto that he’s coming. And with that, the Fast Saga loses one of its best characters - or so everyone thought.
By the eighth Fast & Furious movie, the series had fully entered the realm of high-octane Hollywood action with superhuman feats a common occurrence. The Fate of the Furious revs all the way to icy Russia (production actually filmed in Iceland) to stop a nuclear submarine hijacked by Cipher to trigger a nuclear war. On the ice, Dom’s crew tear it up, with the sequence reaching its peak when Luke Hobbs redirects a heat-seeking missilewith his bare hands. That’s the “Furious” part of Fast & Furious, you know.
Hacking into the computer of Luke Hobbs is one thing. Sitting in his chair is another. The frightening introduction of Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw is quickly followed by his match-up with Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs, kicking off a muscular rivalry between two of the baddest bald dudes action cinema has ever seen. (Watch for the moment Dwayne Johnson channels his old “The Rock” persona and performs his in-ring finisher, Rock Bottom, onto a glass table, with a memorable camera movement that follows along.) While these two buff dudes start out as enemies - well, they mostly stay that way, even if they find themselves teaming up in their spin-off Hobbs & Shaw.
The thing about The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is that its story is about teenagers playing a deadly game reserved for adults. The lethal world of street racing has, up to this point, been ruled by grown men like Brian and Dom. But the opening race through suburbia that kicks off Tokyo Drift sees teens risking their lives for petty prom date bets. It’s fun and it rips, thanks in large part to director Justin Lin’s sharp sense of speed. But this is no place for kids, and the sequence’s violent end proves the sort of danger that lies ahead.
Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Dom Toretto flying through the air to save Letty like he’s Superman. In the memorable highway sequence of Fast & Furious 6, where Dom’s crew realize they’re pitted against a hijacked military tank (another iconic moment), Dom goes to literally great lengths to save Letty from certain doom. With the sixth movie, the Fast Saga was growing comfortably into its new gear of explosive Hollywood action, and Dom’s impossible act of heroism proves that these movies had graduated to a whole new level.
It’s a sequence so impossibly awesome in its gleeful defiance of physics that it doesn’t matter there’s barely a story reason for it. In James Wan’s Furious 7, Dom’s crew take on a sensitive mission from the enigmatic Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), which sees them flying over the Caucasus Mountains in Azerbaijan -in cars. That’s right. With parachutes attached to their rugged rides, “The Family” all drop from the sky and somehow land perfectly on the road before doing what they do best. It’s stupid in the best way, a set piece that takes your breath away while you’ve left your brain at the door.
Noteveryaction scene in Fast & Furious includes Dom being superheroic. In Fast & Furious 6, utility players Roman and Han square off with The Raid’s Joe Taslim, while Letty (working for villain Owen Shaw) throws hands with Hobbs' new partner Riley Hicks, played by former women’s UFC competitor Gina Carano. While Letty holds her own against Riley - including apainfulfall down rock-hard subway steps - Taslim makes quick work of Roman and Han, who get smacked down in front of London pedestrians. The Fast & Furious series has quite a few memorable hand-to-hand fight scenes, but this underground melee ranks among its best.
Is there any line more vulgar and devastating than Hobbs telling Shaw, “I will bang you like a Cherokee drum”? That line alone is top tier. But the rest of the “Prison Break” sequence from the eighth Fast & Furious is superb too, with Hobbs and Shaw demonstrating their contrasting energies by how they maneuver around a violent prison riot. While Hobbs flexes his muscles and throws grown men around like ragdolls, Shaw parkours his way above, below, and through fellow prisoners with ease. Along with the choice needledrop of “Speakerbox” by Bassnectar, and you have an all-time sequence even from a mid-range movie.
When Dwayne Johnson first joined the Fast & Furious franchise, there was excitement in the air at the prospect of a throwdown with Vin Diesel. After an hour-plus of the movie building up that tension, Fast Five delivered the goods in how it pits these two alpha males who square off like it’s WrestleMania Sunday. Importantly, their scuffle ends with a pin drop moment when Dom - wrench in hand - takes a violent swing to a prone Hobbs. The camera lingers a few moments before it reveals that Dom intentionally missed - a statement to Hobbs if there ever was one.
Let’s admit it: We’ve all wanted to do this with a hot date before. In 2 Fast 2 Furious, Brian demonstrates his slick driving skills to fellow agent Monica Fuentes (played by Eva Mendes), by keeping his ocean blue eyes fixed on hers while his new, tricked-out Mitsubishi Lancer pushes past 90 on the road. When Brian’s old pal Roman pulls up, we learn that this is nothing but an old stunt Brian pulls to woo ladies in the front seat. Too bad Brian never reveals the secret, because it’s easily the smoothest thing anyone does in the entire Fast Saga.
Never before has a Fast & Furious villain felt genuinely scary. At the start of Furious 7, the Fast & Furious movies pick up from the previous movie’s events with its introduction of Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw, the older brother of Luke Evans' Owen Shaw. In the hospital where Owen Shaw is bedridden, Deckard promises to get the people who hurt him - in this case, it’s none other than Dominic Toretto. In an impressive one-take sequence that acts as the movie’s opening credits, Deckard casually exits the hospital, slowly revealed to be in total disarray (presumably Deckard’s doing). Nowthat’show you introduce a new franchise villain.
Han is a man of few words, but in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a moving monologue set against the glistening neon lights of Tokyo at night time gives us insight into his pathos. Fashioning himself like the old cowboys of Western classics, Han tells teenage Sean Boswell that Tokyo is his “Mexico,” a place to cool his heels while his past fades in the distance. In Tokyo Drift, Han is shrouded in mystery. But only through the later movies do we see exactly what - and whom - Han is talking about.
The look on Dom’s face says it all. Towards the end of the first Fast & Furious movie, Brian is forced to blow his cover as an undercover cop to call in a MEDEVAC to save a wounded Vince. Until this point, Brian enjoyed the deep trust of Dom, who defended him from accusations that he was a narc. Turns out, those accusations were right, and Dom isn’t at all thrilled that he’s been rolling with police. While this moment marked the end of Dom and Brian’s first run together, things were only just getting started.
In the beginning, Fast & Furious knew what its paying audiences wanted: Beautiful people, and really fast cars. 2 Fast 2 Furious lives up to its kooky title with a stand-out sequence that’s just so unforgettable. Late in the movie, Brian and Roman rely on their street racing contacts (namely Tej) to help throw the Miami police off their scent. Pulling into a warehouse garage, the doors open to let outseveral dozenmodded cars, all spilling and spinning out like someone just toppled over a box of Hot Wheels. How can a single garage hold that many cars? How do they not all crash into each other? Who cares? It’s a killer moment that forever cemented the vibe of Fast & Furious forever.
Fast Five is really a movie where Vin Diesel goes toe to toe with “The Rock.” But like a true main event match for WWE, there’s a lot of smack talking first. When Luke Hobbs finally has enough evidence to arrest Dom Toretto, Hobbs and his men roll up to Dom, who is surrounded by Brazil’s street racers. Hobbs might have the law on his side. But as Dom reminds him, “This is Brazil!” If there’s one moment that epitomizes Fast Five, it’s this one: Two beefy men, cut from the same tight-fitting cloth, staring down with red-hot hatred and respect.
I don’t know how else to say this, so I’m just going to say it as plainly as I can:Dwayne Johnson flexes his muscles so hard, his arm cast comes off.In Furious 7, Johnson’s Hobbs is sidelined for most of the movie after falling from his office to the ground floor during his fight with Deckard Shaw. But when the action finally comes back to Los Angeles, Hobbs knows that naptime is over, and flexes his arm cast off in a moment that of course made it into the movie’s trailers. Of all the impossible things that happen in Furious 7 - like the skydiving cars, Brian’s death-defying leap off a falling bus, or even all that destruction in Abu Dhabi - this one just takes the cake.
At the end of The Fast & the Furious, Dom and Brian aren’t friends - but they remain men of their word. In the climax of the first movie, Dom and Brian embark on one last race to outrun an oncoming train. The movie’s money shot is still both of their cars narrowly missing the train, shot in gorgeous slow-motion that characterized action cinema throughout the 1990s. After Dom eats it from hitting a semi, Brian hands him the keys to his own car, telling him the now iconic line: “I owe you a 10-second car.” Cue Ja Rule. Cue credits. Cue a brand new franchise.
Arguably, it’s the moment that changed everything. With its street racing past far behind it now, the Fast Saga sped towards its blockbuster future with the heist-oriented Fast Five. Early in the movie, director Justin Lin declares that the past is prologue when Dom and Brian pull off a train heist that ends with them driving off a steep cliff and falling into the river below. Observe the movie cutting to total silence, with just the windy whispers of air scoring the moment. In the real world, this would kill Dom and Brian. But in the world of the Fast & Furious, this is just the start of a whole new phase.
It all starts here. In theveryfirst race of the Fast & Furious franchise, Paul Walker’s Brian is close to smoking Vin Diesel’s Dom until Dom rockets to the finish line first. (Not only that, but Brian smokes his own car, rendering it barely drivable after they pop open the hood.) From Walker’s surfer-dude line delivery of “Dude, I almost had you” to Diesel’s thundering speech about the clear line separating winners from losers, this is the moment when the first Fast movie locks in and never lets off the gas pedal. Always remember: Winning’s winning.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
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