Fun fact: I saw the last 5 minutes of this movie probably half a dozen times while I was working overnights for a cable company in the early 2000s. No idea how or why I never saw any earlier part of it. Later, it turned into a big movie series, and I still never saw any of them. But apparently my parents have, because today is Mother’s Day, and the eighth entry of said series is what she wants to see. So I decided to catch up, which means watch the first one and fail to see anything else due to time constraints.

The point of my opening anecdote is that it turns out the last 5 minutes of The Fast and the Furious do shockingly little to spoil anything that has gone before. Well enough so that I feel bad doing it my own self, though I suppose I’m the last person in North America to have seen it. Basically, Vin Diesel is the big cheese of the LA street racing scene, and Paul Walker (who as far as I know built his entire career around these flicks) is the ingenue trying to break into said scene. So Vin takes him under his wing eventually, and they race a lot of cars and have chases and things. Also, there’s a subplot about a truck hijacking ring that keeps trying to distract from the chasing and whatnot.

If you like cool stunts and fast cars, or if you’ve ever played Grand Theft Auto games, you should check it out. (Because this movie, and maybe the whole series based on previews I’ve seen, is a series of GTA side missions come to life. (To be clear, this is praise.))