The Fast and Furious crew are rolling into Netflix with their first five outings, which is the perfect length for a weekend-long Fast marathon. But while all five movies are more than worth watching in their own unique ways, five movies is a lot of time for even the most dedicated Fast and Furious fans to carve out of their weekend plans. So, if you’d like to ride with Dom and his crew, we’ve put together a few viewing options for a Fast rewatch that won’t require sacrificing your whole weekend for family.
This is the drag race option, a quarter-mile of pure speed and greatness. This back-to-back gives you two of the top three movies in the series no matter how you slice it, and it lines up to be a pretty perfect action double header. On top of that, it also plays like a perfect microcosm of the Fast franchise’s broader shifts toward blockbuster mayhem, with each movie clearly reflecting the era of Hollywood filmmaking it was created in.
There’s really no good narrative reason to pick these three to watch out of the five available on Netflix, but here’s the thing: They’re easily the best three available. And you know what, what is the Fast franchise about if it’s not about having the best time you can?
The most important story beats
It’s a damn shame to cut Tokyo Drift out of any Fast rewatch you might be indulging in, but if all you’re looking for is a summary of the critical moments in the Fast family’s story, then these are the right three to pick from the options available.
Look, I can’t really fully recommend this one, but I can understand how it might happen. Maybe on your normal rewatches you (very rightly and correctly) decide to miss these two? And now that only the first five are on Netflix, you could argue it’s the perfect excuse to go back and give these decidedly lesser entries a more fair shake? You probably won’t come out of this double feature with a new favorite movie in the franchise, but you will at least come out enjoying these two movies more than you remember. On top of that, it’s a pretty excellent pairing for the talents of Paul Walker, and that’s an important highlight for any Fast rewatch.
On the one hand, you could definitely seek out the other Fast and Furious movies on the various streaming sites they exist on — most of them are on Peacock, but that will be changing at the end of this week. On the other hand, the best option might just be to stay on Netflix and check out a few Fast-like movies you haven’t seen before: the Lost Bullet series.
Lost Bullet is a franchise of two French movies that are full of incredible car chases and vehicular mayhem. They don’t exactly bring the family vibes that the Fast franchise trades on, but as far as car-based action goes, Lost Bullet absolutely lives up to the best that Dom and his crew can offer.
