Originally Posted by
BurnetRhoades
Mmm, actually, the first one isn't a racing movie. It's an undercover cop movie set in the street racing world. Very little time is actually given to racing itself. It's about Walker's character going undercover and dealing with his conflicting feelings over his target, not entirely unrelated to his feelings for his target's sister. It's exactly, the movie No Man's Land with D.B.Sweenie and the tiger-blood-warlock, with the change that Diesel isn't a real villain, unlike Sheen in NML.
#2 shares even more with the later 4 + 5 than it does the first, it's just not done as well. But it's not a racing movie. Not hardly. It gives even less time to actual racing than the first film and what it does do is just flippin' retarded and all those involved should be fucking ashamed of themselves.
#3 is a coming of age movie that features more racing than any of the other films and would be the only one you could reasonably classify as a "racing movie". Grand Prix is a racing movie. Days of Thunder is a racing movie. #3 is a racing movie with an actual story and characters.
I do agree with your ordering on the first three, though I know deep down #3 is best of the first three, if not the entire franchise (as an actual whole film). I just still prefer the simplicity and pacing of the first film. The third film is like Season of the Witch in the Halloween filmography. It doesn't need to be anything but its own thing and being part of an existing franchise actually hurts it more than helps.