Act fast to watch first three Fast and Furious movies on Netflix

Consider this a PSA: Netflix currently has the first three movies in the Fast & Furious franchise in rotation, but Car and Driver reports that ends in a week. Come Sunday, September 1, The Fast and The Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift will exit the Netflix catalog for some indeterminate time. That makes the last week of August a great time to watch the first movie and remember how much an intensely car-centric undercover cop movie was able to do with two good characters, a few lurid paint jobs, and a lot of horsepower. As an experiment in culture, watch the 18-year-old F&F, then head to the odeon to watch the five-week-old Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw — effectively a DC Comics movie without the superhero uniforms — contemplate its plot and try to piece together how we got here.

Speaking of plots, Fast and Furious 9 is already shooting, but no one outside the folks on set appears to what it's about. A brace of the OG cast returns, from Vin Diesel to Jordana Brewster and Ludacris. Hobbs & Shaw crossover Helen Mirren makes an appearance, but she's the only one to show up from the new, alternate universe. Michael Rooker is a late walk-on as Buddy, and John Cena's role remains a mystery. The film is scheduled to open May 22, 2020, Memorial Day weekend. 

We're dark on the story, but we do know two of the cars that will justify the "fast" part of the title. Instagram user "_pw40" caught at least two 2020 Toyota Supras on the urban set in Tbilisi, Georgia. One of them is a feverish orange color, thought to pay tribute to the late Paul Walker's MkIV Supra in the first film. Then user "chromecars.de" posted video of Dominic Toretto's new ride, a vintage, mid-engined Charger (not the one in the photo) with barely enough ground clearance to get over a speed bump. There's also an armored personnel carrier in one of the shots, and with Charlize Theron coming back as a cyberterrorist and Nathalie Emmanuel as a computer hacktivist, expect a whole bunch of heavy-duty destruction and explosions on the furious side.