First of all, I love cars. I grew up in a household where our idea of a road trip game was seeing how many Maybachs we could count between Boston and North Carolina, instead of how many different states we could find on license plates—not that this is not a valid road trip game as well.
Being a fast car fan, the Fast and Furious movies have always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. Raunchy dance music, fast, crazy editing, and Paul Walker? Yes, please. However, my affinity for cars seemed to be shared primarily with my male friends. These days the Fast and Furious films are ubiquitous, but they aren’t just for a male audience at all.
Last night I saw Furious 7, the most recent installment in the series. To be honest, I’m not even sure I saw number six, and was just ready for implausible action scenes, and a lot of cheesy lines from Vin Diesel. I one hundred percent got my fill (just watching Jason Statham drive around in a Maserati is enough for a lifetime), but I also found a distinctly feminist streak in the film, intentional or not.
First of all, Ramsay–the high profile hacker fought over by multiple terrorist organizations and countries–is not a glasses wearing, pimple faced nerd (as Roman predicts), but a sexy and intelligent woman, played by Nathalie Emmanuel. Move aside Sheldons of the world, there’s a new breed of geek in town. My favorite line in the film? When Ramsay asks Letty (Michelle Rodriquez) who is coming to save them and she responds, “Honey, we are it:” No one is saving Letty, she has got her own back.
Letty has always been tough, and in this film is given a pretty extensive and intense fight scene with the head of one of their target’s security, who happens to be another woman in heels and elegant gown. If you think that two men fighting looks tough, you should see two women battling it out in stilettos. It really is more impressive than any sort of fisticuffs any men could get into.
Yes, there is still the woman who starts off the street race in a skirt that does not barely cover her ass, it simply doesn’t. Despite this (and really it’s all just in good fun), the Fast and Furious movies have made strides in multiple areas. As Entertainment Weekly pointed out, it is one of the few franchises, or really films, in Hollywood, that has a diverse cast, without feeling forced or tacked on.
What’s so great about these films is that they do appeal to a much wider audience. Woman, man, white, black, blue, orange—it doesn’t matter, you can be a part of the family. So as a woman, I implore all other women to take a seat, get in gear, and ride or die.