review of The Fast and the Furious circa 1955 even though I only saw the last half and it was late and so I dont remember much of the tiny funny details

Twice in a lifetime, a film comes along that leaves you breathless. This is one of them. It is a true cinematic gem and I am pretty sure the directors of the current fast and the furious movies ripped off this movie. Not that I would know. I only vaguely remember the last half hour of the first one, and the rest of the movies I never saw.

The premise of this film is that Frank (played by John Ireland) got wrongly accused of a murder and instead of going to court he steals a rich girl’s jaguar and kidnaps the girl.

One of the many great details that together make this fantastic film is the soundtrack. As far as I counted, it consists of only one piece played over and over. This piece’s name is “the crescendo-ing music they play when someone’s about to get stabbed but the murderer takes his time” and it serves many purposes. For example, there is one scene where Frank and the girl just escape from the cops. That scene had no music. The scene of them driving away, staring ahead at the road did. The music got louder and more dramatic, and then at the part where a stabbing should happen, the girl says “I’m hungry.” That is just one example of the versatility of this one song soundtrack.

Another great feature is the acting and actors. I’m pretty sure that the actors they hired to be cops were actual cops from the small town where they filmed this. They would always say the most pointless lines and say those lines in a rapid fire motion kinda like a lame Robin Williams. The best actors and probably the only ones they paid were John Ireland and the girl. Even then, the girl is always changing her mind about Frank. One moment she hates him, the next she is making out with him. All of this, I might add, is before she finds out he didn’t commit murder.

The best and final detail that makes this movie so spectacular is the car chases. They were truly kinda good. The one exception is the final scene. The car is supposed to fall off the course and crash. Instead, a clay car falls off the course and crashes. Then the clay car turns back into a barely dented car, Frank and the girl embrace, really poorly written dialogue is exchanged and the movie ends, all while the “about to be stabbed” music is playing, but a little more cheerful. Based on the music, you’d think that everyone is not safe at all and that Frank will go to jail for the rest of his life. Not so. Only the the director and anyone else that supported the director’s creative vision for this movie went to jail. Or at least they should have. This movie was bad even for its time. This movie was bad for any time. The only way that this movie was good is that now I more appreciate movies where the director actually made an effort.