The Top 5 Fastest And Most Furious Scenes From The Fast And The Furious

How could you turn your back on family Dom?

I was not able to see an early screening of The Fate of the Furious this week, but in honor of one of the greatest franchises in movie history, here is a look at the five fastest and most furious scenes of the series. Spoilers ahead.
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The Final Quarter-Mile Race (The Fast and The Furious)

You’ve got to have one moment from the original, and it was a toss-up between the first race - where Brian learned it doesn't matter whether you win by an inch or a mile - or the last race; for me, the last race has bigger moments. Not only does Jesse get gunned down by Johnny Tran (RIP), and a motorcycle race ensue, but we see the quarter mile race where both Dom and Brian barely avoid being hit by a train. That shot is quintessential Fast and the Furious and one that would come to be used in nearly all of their flashback scenes. Though I will say of the first race that I feel for Ja Rule when he loses and misses his chance with Monica. 

4) Han’s Death (The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift)

This chase sequence is probably the only redeemable quality about The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, and that's only because of this gut punch at the end. Han is the only good character in Tokyo Drift and they killed him but luckily for us, he’s back in the fourth movie since the timeline jumps backward. But we weren't finished with this moment, not by a longshot. At the end of Furious 6 the franchise revisits this scene and the murderer is revealed to be none other than Jason Statham. Bringing Letty back from the dead was quite a moment, but this was a masterstroke. It proved that they had a plan the entire time (they did not have a plan the whole time).
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3) Hobbs vs Shaw (Furious 7)

The Rock may be the most important thing to happen to The Fast and The Furious franchise. There are a lot of great Rock moments to discuss—his introduction in Fast Five, his fight with Dom, the fact that he is sweating at all times, including while he's doing paperwork—but the Hobbs and Deckard Shaw fight is magnificent. This is a knock-down drag-out fight through several panes of glass that would have left any man crippled. But not these two. At one point Hobbs gives Shaw a rock bottom through a glass coffee table and I went bonkers; it's as if this fight was written for me by my 12-year-old self. Hobbs ends up with a broken arm, which leads to possibly the best line of the entire franchise.

2) The Airplane Chase (Furious 6)

Furious 6 is my favorite movie in the series because it's the movie where they drop any pretense of making sense. Please remember that this movie is about the government commissioning California street racers to stop an international group of terrorists on the world's longest runway. Someone actually did the science behind this scene and apparently for it to work this runway would need to be 28 miles long. And don't forget about all the fighting that happens on the plane, which includes Dom giving someone a dolphin-like headbutt, Hobbs and Dom teaming up on a flying clothesline, and Dom escaping the explosion at the end by driving a car through the nose of the airplane. But this scene also packs some emotional heft as Gisele sacrifices herself to save Han—truly a crushing blow for the team and fans.

1) The Vault Heist (Fast Five)

Many consider Fast Five to be the best movie in the series because it represents the turning point of the series. It took a movie that was about street racing and it became something else. The craziest thing about the vault heist is that a majority of it was done with practical effects. This scene was filmed in Puerto Rico and everyone seemed pretty cool with them destroying all of their buildings. When Dom and the gang ran out of buildings to destroy they switched it up by wrecking a ridiculous amount of cop cars. And do not forget the way our villain is killed as Hobbs (a cop) calls an unarmed man a sumbitch and then pops two bullets in him. Did you cheer? Because I definitely cheered.

The Real #1) Brian’s Goodbye (Furious 7)

This is the best scene of the series, but it is neither fast nor furious; it's actually kind of touching. At the end of Furious 7 we had to say goodbye to Paul Walker, who died in a real-life car wreck, and the camera focuses on Brian's film family playing on the beach while the gang watches from a distance with "See You Again" in the background. As I walked out of the theater, a fellow moviegoer was hunched over a trash can because she was crying so hard. Meanwhile her boyfriend was rolling his eyes while he tried to calm her down, but the scene clearly works. In a movie series built off family and living our lives one-quarter mile at a time, this was a perfect tribute to one of the pillars of the franchise.