Joe Hildebrand: Most bizarre thing about The Fast and the Furious

The Fast and the Furious franchise is just musclebound guys, hot chicks and fast cars, which makes another part of it particularly odd, argues Joe Hildebrand.

Every man has his weakness, something that stops him dead in his tracks and forces him to stay awake at night.

I speak of course of The Fast and the Furious, the most improbable motion picture franchise since Yahoo Serious thought he should do a follow up to Young Einstein.

Whenever I happen to stumble across any of the Fast and Furious movies on TV it is an instant deal-breaker – not for the television but for anything else I had planned to do that night. This includes sleep, meals, housework and child-rearing – although somehow I always manage to find the time to get another beer.

I know I am not alone in this because while everyone was angsting over whether or not there’d be another Star Wars or how Marvel managed to pants DC, the Fast and Furious films were quietly – ironically given their preferred method of transport – becoming one of the biggest blockbuster series in Hollywood history.

Vin Diesel in Fast & Furious (2009), the fourth installment of the franchise. Picture: Supplied

Yet for years nobody seemed to notice because nobody really talked about it. No one blogged or tweeted or banged on about how much they loved Dom Toretto’s Dodge Charger or Brian’s baby blue eyes. Much like Scott Morrison’s “Quiet Australians” they just came to the show and then went back home again.

In this sense F&F is a kind of unspoken revolution against the wankery of wokeness that besets Hollywood elsewhere. It’s just musclebound guys, hot chicks, fast cars and laconic speeches about the importance of family, which seems odd for an international criminal enterprise that frequently violates road safety laws.

And whenever you catch any part of it on TV you know that you are a maximum five minutes away from someone driving a car out of a plane and then driving that plane out of a larger plane.

Indeed, there is nothing these macho supermen can’t do – with the obvious exception of growing a full head of hair.

Meanwhile those of us with more hair but fewer heroics just sit back on the couch and silently think to ourselves: “I am bogan, hear me roar.”

Joe Hildebrand is on 2GB Nights with John Stanley on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8pm