On this day in 2001, \u201cThe Fast and the Furious,\u201d a crime drama based in the underground world of street racing in Southern California, debuts in theaters across the United States.<\/p>\n
In the film, directed by Rob Cohen, Paul Walker starred as Brian O\u2019Connor, an undercover cop who infiltrates the illegal late-night racing scene in Los Angeles to catch a gang suspected of hijacking big-rig trucks to get the parts to outfit their souped-up cars. As the movie opens, O\u2019Connor is practicing his high-speed driving in order to blend in with his targets; his vehicle is a bright green 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse, which he powers through an empty parking lot near Dodger Stadium. Later on, O\u2019Connor loses the title to the Mitsubishi to Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), the leader of the gang of suspected thieves, after a street race. Toretto, the reigning \u201cking of the streets,\u201d dominates the competition in his powerful fire-engine red 1993 Mazda RX-7 Twin Turbo. In another scene, Toretto drives a hulking vintage 1969\/1970 Dodge Charger.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
These were just three of the cars featured prominently in the high-speed, high-impact racing scenes that punctuate \u201cThe Fast and the Furious.\u201d The screenplay for the film was based on an article about the street-racing scene titled \u201cRacer X,\u201d written by Kenneth Li and published in Vibe magazine in 1998. Street racing (an illegal practice that should not be confused with drag racing, which is a popular sport most commonly done on a track, along a straight \u201cdrag\u201d strip) began in the early 1990s on the roads and highways of Southern California, mostly among young Asian Americans, but quickly spread; Li\u2019s article chronicled the adventures of a racer living in New York City. Like many street racers, the characters in \u201cThe Fast and the Furious\u201d favor low-slung Acura Integras, Honda Civics, and other common Japanese-made compact cars that are modified so that they can reach speeds of around 160 mph.<\/p>\n
Despite mixed reviews from critics, \u201cThe Fast and the Furious\u201d was an unexpected hit at the box office. It spawned three sequels: \u201c2 Fast 2 Furious\u201d (2003), \u201cThe Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift\u201d (2006) and \u201cFast & Furious\u201d (2009), in which the four main co-stars of the first film\u2013Walker, Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster\u2013all reprised their roles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On this day in 2001, \u201cThe Fast and the Furious,\u201d a crime drama based in the underground world of street racing in Southern California, debuts in theaters across the United States. In the film, directed by Rob Cohen, Paul Walker starred as Brian O\u2019Connor, an undercover cop who infiltrates the illegal late-night racing scene in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automotive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}