This is our definitive collection of the absolute most pause-worthy moments in the Fast and
Furious franchise. Not just the coolest scenes, but the actual moments that had you picking
your jaw off the floor and theater audiences howling in disbelief.
They're fun in their own way, but the first three movies in the Fast franchise clearly
follow a pretty predictable formula, right up until the third one enters its final act.
To put it kindly, Tokyo Drift is the most polarizing entry in the series, ditching Dom
and Brian in favor of country boy Sean Boswell and retired racer Han Lue. Late in the film,
as they tear through the packed city streets, racing for their lives, Han's car is struck
suddenly while going through an intersection. Sean bolts from his own car to help Han, who
is trapped and bleeding in the wrecked car, but the gas ignites.
Han's death shocked fans and elicited true gasps in the theater. His arc resonated with
audiences who watched him overcome a tragic past to find new purpose through Sean.
"Life's simple. You make choices and you don't look back."
Fans loved how Han's disaffected lilt and playfulness contrasted beautifully against
the chest-thumping bravado of the other racers, making his death sting that much more.
This moment is monumental in the franchise. It solidified Tokyo Drift as essential viewing
and set in motion the arc that would dominate the next decade of the saga. And when Han
came back for the fourth, fifth, and sixth films, we needed to pause things just to figure
out the timeline.
When a grieving Han tells the crew he's moving to Tokyo in Fast & Furious 6, you could feel
the entire theater sit up and pay attention. Everyone wondered if that was it. Was the
loop closed now? Then a surprise epilogue floored everyone, playing back Han's death
from a new angle. It turned out that this was no random collision. Stunned, we watched
Deckard Shaw emerge from the other car, and coldly toss Letty's silver cross necklace
into the wreckage with Han still trapped. Walking away, Deckard leaves a threatening
voicemail for Dominic Toretto as the car explodes behind him.
With an impact that's still being felt in the ninth film, Han's death, both times, is
without a doubt the most paused moment in the entire series.
It's hard to remember a time when the Fast series wasn't the ridiculous, basically superheroic
juggernaut it is today, but it's easy to figure out where the turning point is. Fast Five
punched audiences right in the face right from its high-octane intro. On a lonely desert
road, the gang launches a daring assault on a prison bus. The action slows to a dramatic
crawl as the bus flips over Brian's car and careens along until we smash cut into the
title card.
This introduction is simply brilliant. Fast Five managed to introduce its main players,
blast the plot into overdrive, and set the new standard for its wild action all in under
90 seconds. If that wasn't enough, it also showed us that the Fast franchise is apparently
set in the same universe as Parks & Recreation, or at least they cast the same actor who plays
Perd Hapley. Compared to the extremes the franchise would go to later, the bus flip
pales in comparison, but the raw thrill of such a tightly paced opening remains a highlight
of the franchise.
Even when they're facing down seemingly impossible odds that could lead to certain doom, Dom
Toretto and his crew very rarely show anything resembling fear.
"Daddy's gotta go to work."
In Furious 7, though, there's one sequence where they're definitely justified in being
a little worried. We see them in a dark space, and then the floor opens up to reveal they're
in cars in the hold of a cargo plane that does not seem to be coming in for a landing
any time soon. We've seen some insane stuff in the six movies before this, but would they
really go skydiving inside cars?
Of course they would.
The Fast franchise is full of ridiculous stunts, but nothing comes close to this one. Why?
Because it's real. They dropped actual cars out of an actual plane. The series has always
aimed for real stunts whenever possible, and it cannot be stressed enough: that happened.
It's an incredible feat, and a moment that earns a pause, and honestly? We'd be scared
too.
This franchise's relationship with the laws of physics has always been a contentious one.
But Fast & Furious 6 went from exaggerating to flagrantly disregarding with its infamously
awesome tank scene. If a full on army tank tearing down the highway wasn't enough, things
really get out of control when Dom sees that Letty is about to be thrown off a bridge at
high speed. Naturally, he climbs on top of and leaps from his own car, flying across
the bridge to catch her midair before breaking his impact against a windshield. We might
be wrong, but we've only seen that kind of catch in one other place.
"Easy miss. I've got you."
"You've got me? Who's got you?!"
To put it mildly, we have questions. How could Dom have possibly calculated his trajectory?
And maybe more importantly, how are they not dead? Again?
Fast Five's inspired casting of Dwayne Johnson as the relentless government-backed bounty
hunter Luke Hobbs is one of the biggest reasons the franchise well and truly took off. From
the instant he steps off that plane, Johnson steals every scene he's in with Hobbs' intensity
and unexpected quirky humor.
While he's immediately a hit, the scene that cemented the Rock's place in the franchise
was the chase through the favela in Brazil. While Dom and crew desperately flee a hit
attempt by a local crime lord, they remain unaware of a second, more dangerous threat:
Hobbs. As he leaps between rooftops, Dom looks back midair to see Hobbs bulldozing through
a window after him.
It's worth pausing the action here for a lot of reasons, but watching Vin Diesel and Dwayne
Johnson exchange their first of many in-character looks of pure hatred is definitely one of
them, especially considering the real-world route the two actors took the franchise in
from there.
Like the tank catch, Dom's big escape plan from Furious 7 is a must-pause moment, just
not for the right reasons. After Dom rescues hacker Ramsey, the bad guy keeping her captive
traps them against a cliff. With mercenaries on one side and a sheer drop on the other,
Dom smiles before launching into a pretty sick burnout, kicking up a cloud of dirt that
obscures everything.
A reasonable person, even in the F&F universe, might expect that Dom would escape in the
confusion, but that's not nearly absurd enough for this movie. He's still there, and all
that dust was just to spin his car around to face that cliff. With that, and with Ramsey
making the smart decision to put on a helmet, Dom floors it and goes over the cliff, and
this time there's no parachute to slow him down. He seems to crash into every rock along
the way until finally, the car lands, upside down, and Dom emerges, brushing himself off,
and of course, is absolutely fine.
"That's one way down a mountain."
You'll need to pause this moment just to figure out what the hell happened, and how they're
not dead. That must've been one heck of a good helmet.
With all their talk about the importance of family and the literal world-saving exploits
of the later films, it's easy to forget that Dom and his crew are career criminals. The
big heist at the end of Fast Five serves as a good reminder, and one of the wildest sequences
of the franchise.
Brian and Dom have just ripped a 9,000-pound steel vault onto the packed city streets of
Rio de Janeiro. They've got it chained to their respective cars, swinging it around
like a wrecking ball as they tear around corners, and smashing into the local cops for collisions
that are definitely not going to leave a lot of survivors. Don't worry, though. We're told
that literally every police officer in the city is corrupt, so that part's fine. When
they take a sharp turn that sends the vault careening into a crowded bank full of terrified
civilians, however, their actions in pursuit of money are a little less lovable.
The entire sequence is incredible from start to finish, but that moment with the bank stands
above the rest. If you pause it to see the people scrambling out of the way, you also
get a chance to think about how Hobbs might've been onto something when he tried to arrest
these guys.
Whether you like these movies or not, there remains an undeniable, objective truth: they're
imaginative in a way most modern action movies aren't. The stunts here are so unbelievable,
so off the wall, that it feels like only a child could have designed them. Case in point:
the zombie car-pocalypse of The Fate of the Furious. As part of a plot for world domination
that seriously involves blackmailing a street racer, ultra-hacker Cipher takes control of
an army of self-driving cars to cause chaos in New York City. And then it gets really
wild.
Not content to just use the cars already on the ground, Cipher decides to make it rain,
with dozens of cars pouring down from a parking garage like two-ton hail. The only problem
with watching these movies in the theater is that a moment like this demands to be paused,
rewatched and paused again as you shriek in utter disbelief at how cool that was.
We all know how "chicken" is played. Two people drive straight at each other, each determined
not to pull away first. Under normal circumstances, someone swerves at the last minute, but this
is Fast & Furious, and these drivers are Dom Toretto and Deckard Shaw. Both men are so
oozing with pride and machismo that Furious 7 features not one, but two scenes where our
badass leads decide to take it to the extreme and go for the brutal head-on collision both
times.
The first is a true jaw-dropper on its own that closes out a climactic chase scene. We
know these guys are tough, and that they always wear their seatbelts, kids, but this is a
whole new level. They plow into each other with the kind of force that would lead to
a busy night at the morgue here in the real world. These guys, though? Deckard pops his
neck and emerges without a scratch. Dom climbs out a little worse for wear, but still fine.
Both cars are totaled masses of twisted steel, and these dudes are still ready for a fistfight.
Or a giant hammer fight in Dom's case.
Somehow, the second time this happens manages to be just as, if not more, shocking than
the first. Doing it once is one thing. That's already crazy. But twice, head-on doing eighty,
and Dom can still swing around two comically large wrenches? We should've sent these guys
to fight Thanos.
The Fast and the Furious was about an undercover cop infiltrating illegal street racers who
sometimes boost VCRs and VCR/TV combos. Kids, ask your parents what those are. More than
15 years and a blockbuster franchise later, The Fate of the Furious sees the same racers
now recruited by a secret agent with saving the world from a cyberterrorist threatening
literal nuclear annihilation. It's been a journey. No moment illustrates that better
than the submarine.
Racing across a tundra to escape hordes of Russian soldiers, the gang already has the
odds stacked against them. Then a literal nuclear submarine explodes upward from the
frozen lake below, sending a few trucks or what's left of them flying in all directions
as it too begins chasing the crew.
For a second, press pause and imagine you haven't seen any of the movies since the first
one, and now you're watching this moment. You'd think this lady was really mad about
her VCRs.
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