‘Fast & Furious’ Meets… Bernie Sanders’ Revolution?
Cars dragging enormous vaults through crowded city streets, roadsters leaping between towering skyscrapers, and government agents redirecting launched submarine torpedoes with their bare hands—the Fast & Furious films have long since devolved into outright cartoonishness. Thus, it’s only fitting that the series has now made the transition to the animated realm with Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, a new eight-part CGI Netflix show that revels in the franchise’s action-packed auto-absurdity.
If there’s a bold choice made by Tim Hedrick and Bret Haaland’s streaming-service affair (premiering Dec. 26), it’s that it features no one from the original Fast & Furious cast—save, that is, for Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, who pops up at the start of the opening episode to convince his cousin Tony (Tyler Posey) to do some government espionage work for Ms. Nobody (Renée Elise Goldsberry). Looking even more like an anthropomorphic thumb than he does in real life, Dom tells Tony, “You’re born to win. But remember, being a Toretto has nothing to do with what you do in that car. Being a Toretto is about what’s in here” [pointing to the kid’s heart]. Later, he offers up the sage advice, “Don’t just follow orders—follow your gut,” and with that, he’s basically gone, ceding the spotlight to Tony and his own misfit crew, which fans will be unsurprised to learn is the boy’s true “family.”
Thankfully, Fast & Furious: Spy Racers keeps monotonous talk about “family” to a relative minimum, instead choosing to place its focus on high-octane moto-mayhem. There are races galore throughout its eight installments, featuring a variety of outlandish rides outfitted with insane high-tech gadgetry. Tony, a blandly straightforward protagonist who just wants to follow in legendary cousin Dom’s footsteps, prefers a pure-muscle Ion Motors Thresher, while his crew boast their own distinctive vehicles, be it a souped-up racer for cocky artist Echo (Charlet Chung), a monster truck for meathead mechanic Cisco (Jorge Diaz), or a collection of remote-controlled drones for techie Frostee (Luke Youngblood). They’re a colorful collection of toy-ready rides that reflect their owners’ personalities, as do the sleek, hyper-powered cars owned by their adversaries—all of which come equipped with grappling hooks, buzzsaws, battering rams, spiked tires, and other assorted do-hickeys that would make 007’s M weep with jealousy.