As you know, franchises – with very few exceptions – last exactly three parts. Fast and Furious movie series, oddly enough, is also a trilogy. Because everything that happened after the Tokyo Drift is some other movie that, for some reason, shoots all the same actors and is also called Fast and Furious, but it has nothing to do with street racing (God forbid if there is one race at the beginning of the film, right before the flight into space).
Considering how successful the first Fast And Furious were, it would seem that exactly the same thing should have happened to video games after the release of Need For Speed Underground: the theme of street racing should have ceased to be a rarity, becoming a permanent given, but for some reason it did not happen.
Films for fans of motorsport – and any kind of motorsport, not only illegal – were rare and still are. And even when such films do appear on the screen, they often turn out to be, if not disgusting, then at least so-so. However, sometimes you still manage to dig up a good car racing movie on the margins of cinema, and if you, like me, still miss the very first Fast and Furious, I have something for you that can provide a dose of the desired visual: Born To Race 2011.
It’s worth mentioning right away that The Born To Race is a made-for-TV movie, so… low budgets, unknown actors, and all that stuff. But even with such a low start, Born To Race will quietly give a head start to much higher-budget and professional films. Have you seen the relatively recent Ford Vs Ferrari? I liked the Born To Race movie better. Or maybe you watched the 2014 movie Need For Speed? Born To Race is better. Or maybe you remember the Thirst for Speed in 2007? Yeah, I don’t remember either. And as soon as I remember, I immediately want to forget. There is no such problem with Born To Race. Despite the low-budget nature of the action and sometimes so-so actors, in general, the film is performed more than at the level. I can’t even blame the purpose of this article for the prolonged action that is inherent in most TV movies; Born to Race flows very evenly. Maybe it would have been a little bit faster, but, in general, there are no scenes that I would like to completely cut out.
This is not least due to the fact that even the shots that do not develop the plot very effectively show us the local fleet, which is extremely important for such a movie. And the car park in this movie is such that you want to watch it again and again. If in the first Fast and Furious everything revolved around tuners, and American power appeared more like big and scary bosses, then in Born To Race the approach is somewhat different: literally everyone except the main character rides Americans. As a result, the number of spectacular butterball scenes is very large, and watching Born To Race is almost more enjoyable than the original Fast And Furious.
Only the protagonist of Born To Race drives a Japanese car, and a couple of minor characters, due to which they are all automatically considered outsiders. The only problem with this approach, perhaps, is that I have never supported the main character in any race, constantly secretly hoping for some clever plot twist that will force the protagonist to change Subaru to something more fun. If this is not obvious, then spoiler alert: nothing like this will happen, the protagonist will remain faithful to his Impreza.
In general, there is not much more to say, since the whole plot of Born To Race is built exclusively around cars and quarter-mile races. Well, okay, not really. There is not even a hint of any gang warfare that has been present in the Fast and the Furious since the very first part, but there is still a love line, as well as a conflict between fathers and children, the new age and the old. Nevertheless, all this seemed to me to be somehow very secondary, translucent. And, to be honest, in this regard, I liked the movie more than Fast And Furious. That is, I would not say that the criminal background plot in Fast and Furious does not work or somehow harms the film – I was pleased to watch both the truck hijackings in the first F&F and the Japanese mafia in Tokyo Drift – but at the same time… I just really enjoyed watching the movie, which is as much about racing as it’s possible to be.
In a separate line, I would like to mention only that it is very surprising how much the movie of 2011 (Born To Race) seems to me similar to the movie of 2001 (the first Fast and Furious). Apart from the fact that Japanese tuners, which were extremely canonical for the early noughties, were replaced by American classics and a couple of newer cars, such as the neo-retro Mustang, in general, Born To Race seems to capture the very atmosphere of the beginning of the new century, which I personally miss very much nowadays. Of course, there is a chance that this is just my imagination, and that from the height of the 20s, 2011 and 2001 simply merged into some common, not particularly defined past… however, all my friends seem to agree with my opinion. I don’t know if anyone working on Born To Race has ever set out to capture the atmosphere of the past decade, but one way or another, they did it.So if you want to be nostalgic and watch something in the spirit of the Fast and the Furious, which has not been seen since the third, or even the very first Fast and the Furious, there simply is no better movie than Born To Race. The bonus is the American models I’ve mentioned many times with huge engines instead of tuners, and in general, if you’re thirty years old or so in 2026 and you love cars, then watching Born to Race movie will definitely be a pleasant pastime for you.
Download Born To Race subtitles (.srt, English)
