The Fast and the Furious movies are known for their intense, action-packed set pieces. Even from the first film, the audience is introduced to jaw-dropping stunts and impossible antics. The movies follow a crew of car thieves and street racers run by Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto. The movies never fail to bring awe-inspiring (and at times head-scratch-inducing) cinematic experiences.
From jumping onto a boat to jumping out of one skyscraper into another, The Fast and The Furious will go down in history for some of the craziest action set pieces. With the new movie coming out on June 25, 2021, fans are guaranteed to see more set pieces that will blow their mind.
10 2 Fast 2 Furious: The Boat Jump
While this movie is thought to be one of the worst entries in the franchise, it still has some pretty awesome set pieces. This moment sees Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) race to keep up with a boat. They have to save a damsel in distress who is on the boat as time is quickly running out.
However, why try to get another boat and chase them when Brian can just launch his car Dukes of Hazards style onto the boat? This is by far one of the coolest action scenes in this movie. So many things could have gone bad, but of course, Brian makes it onto the boat, making fans wonder “Did that car just fly?”
9 Tokyo Drift: Han’s Death
Tokyo Drift follows a young racer named Sean who is sent to live in Tokyo. There he falls in with a crowd of street racers and drifters. His friend Han is the one who trains him, teaching him to drift. In the scene where Han dies, the audience gets an emotionally harrowing race, with crazy stunts on a packed street.
Sean nearly misses a giant crowd of people as he speeds after Han who is being chased by the main villain. Ultimately, poor Han dies in a fiery explosion. This chase scene is action-packed, emotionally harrowing, and has great stunts. Exactly what fans look for out of a movie from this franchise.
8 Fast And The Furious: Final Truck Heist
This set piece from the first movie laid the groundwork for the stunts to come. In this sequence, the crew is trying to steal a truck and the chaos ensues from there. It’s action-packed, brilliantly shot, and well-choreographed.
This scene was before the characters had the almost superhuman strength they have now, so it was very tense and the stakes were high. You see Brian nearly getting shot and serious injuries happen to other members of the crew. It’s emotional and super fun to watch it all play out.
7 Furious 7: The Fight Between Dom and Shaw
In this long-anticipated fight scene, the audience gets to watch Dom and Shaw face off. After murdering one of them, destroying their house, and almost killing Hobbs, the crew is ready to defeat this sinister criminal. In this tense scene, Dom and Shaw battle to death.
Quickly, it gets insane when Hobbs comes with a giant missile shooting helicopter, ready to take Shaw out. This long action sequence is chaotic and violent and borders on being too much, but that’s just what can be expected out of this franchise.
6 Fast & Furious 6: The Never-Ending Runway
In this scene, the audience could see that the franchise was moving the crew into superhuman territory and changing the way the movies were formatted. This scene defies gravity, physics, and basically every other law of nature when a giant cargo plane lands, goes back up in the air, lands again, and tries to take off for a grand total of 13 minutes.
Fans were quick to point out these discrepancies, especially the length of the runway since most are 3-5 miles and not 15-30 miles. But this ushered in a new era of Fast and Furious movies, and now audiences go into the films expecting the impossible.
5 The Fast And The Furious: The First Race
In this set piece, the audience sees the first race between Dom and Brian, and it’s another scene from the opening film that sets the tone for the rest of the franchise. Dom’s car flips over Brian’s and lands without a scratch.
This scene was the start of a bromance that would become one of the most iconic in the history of action movies.
4 Fast Five: Dragging A Vault
In Fast Five, Dom and his crew rob a bank in an attempt to take down a vicious criminal. In this scene specifically, they drag a giant bank vault through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Brian and Dom work together to drag the vault, destroying everything in its path, including police cars, the street, and sidewalks.
The stunt driving in these scenes is fantastic. At one point, the plan backfires and Dom gets launched into the air, landing on a random car. Let’s hope insurance covers that damage.
3 Fast and Furious 6: Tank Scene
“They’ve got a tank!” is an iconic line said by Tej, aka Ludacris. In this action scene, the crew is on the road trying to infiltrate Shaw’s motorcade. To their surprise, they find that Shaw came prepared with a fully operational, military-grade tank.
This happens right after the main characters think they have Shaw by attempting to take out his brigade of cars with a cable wire, but let’s just say they weren’t expecting a tank to come into play. This scene is crazy,. and Ludacris’ lines offer great comic relief to such an intense scene.
2 Furious 7: Skydiving Cars
Dom and his crew decide that cars aren’t just useful for driving, but also for skydiving. After all, why drive the car to the location when it can be launched out of a plane?
This is also one of Paul Walker's final scenes before his untimely passing. The idea might be ridiculous, but these kinds of crazy antics are just the sort of things fans have come to love and expect from a Fast and the Furious movie.
1 Furious 7: The Skyscraper Jump
This movie takes Dom to Abu Dhabi, home of some very giant skyscrapers. Dom is trying to recover a flash drive and ends up needing to get out of there quickly after he basically destroys an entire floor of the building. Take the elevator, right? Wrong!
Dom instead decides to get into an over $3 million dollar Lykan HyperSpeed and launch himself into the neighboring skyscraper... and then into another skyscraper. That’s right, two skyscrapers. This scene is insane and shows how much the franchise had changed since its initial incarnation.