2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today I'm going to be reviewing the 2003 sequel to The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious. It was an interesting watch that's for sure. There probably won't be any spoilers, but if there are, this is your spoiler warning. So let's get into it!

The reason The Fast and the Furious was enjoyable for me to watch is because of the characters and the family feel they had. 2 Fast 2 Furious is severely lacking in that department. Apart from Brian, played once again by Paul Walker, the only character from the first movie to appear in this one is Bilkins, who was Brian's boss in the last one, played by Thom Barry. Everyone else is brand new.

I think this is a pretty good cast. While Tyrese Gibson is mostly known for his music, particularly at the time, I know him for his role as Sergeant Epps in Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). Eva Mendes was in alot of movies in the 2000s and early 2010s though she hasn't been seen in anything since 2014 outside of a TV role on an Australian animated series in 2021. She was Will Smith's co-star in Hitch (2005) and Nicholas Cage's co-star in Ghost Rider (2007), which are the two movies I know her from. The rest of the cast are people I'm not familiar with, aside from Ludacris, though I've never listened to his music, and Mark Boone Junior, who played Detective Flass in Batman Begins, only two years after this movie came out.

There really isn't a whole lot to talk about when it comes to the story. It felt more like a Jason Bourne or a mid-'90s to early 2000s James Bond movie with the action taking center stage for the movie.

While I do like that there are some parallels between Brian in the first movie and Eva Mendes's character in this movie, the writers didn't do enough with those parallels to really warrant their inclusion in the movie. Aside from Brian and Roman suggesting to James Remar's character, Agent Markham, that maybe Monica, Eva's character, had flipped, which means turned, like Brian did at the end of the first movie, and Markham immediately shooting down their suggestion, nothing is done with the parallels between Monica and Brian. Which is disappointing for me, because that could've been a good way to have Brian deal with him letting Toretto go at the end of the first movie without over-relying on the events of the first movie to fuel the events of this movie.

I do enjoy the chemistry between Walker and Gibson in this movie though. Roman Pearce was Brian's best friend growing up, but he got in trouble with the law after Brian became a cop, and blamed Brian for it simply because Brian was a cop. What I like about this is that, it does tie Brian to that familial connection that he had with Mia and Dom Toretto in the first movie, even if it's a very thin connection. And Walker and Gibson work extremely well together, which I love.

2 Fast 2 Furious was released on June 6th, 2003 and despite it making more money than the first movie, people didn't like it as much as the first, particularly the critics. And I think that's because the whole family aspect that was a huge part of the first movie is pretty much absent from this one. Everything else is there, but that aspect, the one that makes the characters feel more like real people that you might meet at some point in your life, is gone and not everyone who went to see this movie, anticipating something similar to the first one, is going to see it just for the action, the cars, and the beautiful people. They want that personal struggle that Dom and Brian went through in the first movie and it's just not there. It still made a decent amount of money considering the "human factor" just wasn't there.

I honestly don't have much else to say about this movie. It was good, but I like the first movie better. It's just not as strong in the character department and, if I were watching this movie for the first time without having seen the first one, I wouldn't care about any of these characters at all. But because I've seen The Fast and the Furious and am already invested in Brian as a character because of that movie, he's the only one I actually care about in this movie. I'm still looking forward to watching Tokyo Drift even though I've heard that it's the worst entry in this franchise.

That my friends is going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another blog post. I'm about halfway through reading Star Wars: Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry, so that is probably going to be my next review. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.