10 times the Fast & Furious crew truly cheated death

While the original F&F movie is the most, err, realistic and low-key of the stories, it still has its share of high-octane racing, the most treacherous of which takes place at the climax of the film. Dom and Brian end up in a final race before the latter plans to arrest him. (He was a Fed, remember?) They proceed to burn rubber down a long stretch of road and just manage to shoot over train tracks as a freight train rolls by. It’s a little too close for comfort. This early brush with the Grim Reaper seems to foreshadow the death-defying craziness of the whole series.

This moment is not about a main character cheating death, just not killing other people. When an enraged Takashi goes after his friend Han for stealing from him, they race through the streets of Tokyo with Sean trying to run interference to save Han. When Sean winds up ahead of them, he finds himself about to bulldoze through a massive crowd of pedestrians. But thanks to his loud car horn and drifting skills he is able to slide through the curved intersection and avoid hitting anyone. As if. This also brings to mind the safe-dragging finale of in Rio. They crushed plenty of vehicles, but no innocent pedestrians were killed as they dragged that big vault through the crowded streets? C’mon.

Continuing from our last entry, the death of Han was the most emotional moment in . Fleeing from Takashi, his car was struck from the side, flipped over, and exploded. But the post-credits stinger in which Dom re-emerges to race Sean, and claiming Han is family, set up a retcon in which the producers brought Han back for Part 4, had his death take place in the post-credits of Part 6, and then allowed him to return for Fast 9! It turns out that Deckard Shaw is the one who hit his car, but thanks to the help of Mr. Nobody, Han planned to fake his own death. Riiiight. Nobody could easily pull that off in front of hundreds of onlookers (including Sean), myriad security cams, and a very savvy Deckard Shaw. But in F&F Land, that’s how they roll. Literally.

Dom and Brian find the rare, souped-up sports car secretly containing the God’s Eye tracking device in a Dubai skyscraper. But with Deckard Shaw trying to gun them down, the only way to get out is for Dom to drive through the windows … into an adjacent tower. As Brian frantically tries to rip out the device, Dom discovers that the brakes don’t work … leading him to hurtle into a third tower. Somehow never hitting any spaces between the floors. They miraculously don’t kill anyone—but take out a bunch of terracotta soldiers on auction—and are able to leap to safety before the car plummets through more windows to the ground below. Even more ridiculous—the duo stands by the broken window high above the ground where whipping winds might hurl them off. That would have been an ironic twist.

During a heist of fast cars from a fast-moving train, Dom and his team get betrayed by their collaborators. Which leads to Brian being stranded on a burning vehicle attached to the train while Dom races up next to him to initiate a rescue. But just as Brian jumps to safety in Dom’s car, a canyon looms up ahead. With the burning vehicle rolling up behind them and the train occupying the bridge by their side, they have only one choice: Jump! It makes for a spectacular freefall, men and car. But here’s the thing—given the height they fall from, they should likely have perished when they hit the water. Or drowned after being knocked unconscious. Good thing they’re in an action movie.

When Dom’s crew tries to take down Owen Shaw on a divided, elevated highway, the psycho baddie has an armored ace up his sleeve—a tank! Our crew has good fortune here—withstanding shelling, a bridge collapse, and Roman’s car surprisingly not being crushed immediately. But the craziest moment has to be when Letty gets inadvertently tossed from Shaw’s tank across the highway and Dom leaps from his car to save her. He catches her and they crash land on a random car with her in his arms. It’s perfectly synched, and they escape without a scratch. He doesn’t even have a broken back.

After Dom dispenses with Deckard Shaw atop a parking garage, mercenary Mose Jakande tries to shoot him down. Hobbs comes to the rescue with a huge Gatling gun to distract the bad guys, and Dom jumps into his muscle car to circle down out of the structure. But soon Jakande is on Dom’s heels, his gunman shooting missiles into the lot and gradually bringing it down around his prey. At the last minute, our determined racer uses a collapsed floor as a ramp and flies into the air, clipping the copter, then crashing down below. Luckily, he managed to attach a bag of grenades onto the side of the steel bird which Hobbs shoots at to blow them to smithereens. And when he is pulled out of his overturned and crumpled car, Dom slowly comes back to life. We’re trying to figure out if he’s past nine lives at this point.

The Fast franchise got all 007 on us by Fast Five, and it’s funny that has a big ice race/battle a la Die Another Day. But this one’s crazier and lasts for half an hour. While Dom’s crew is trying to stop Cipher from stealing a nuclear submarine racing beneath them, they are pursued across a frozen lake by her fleet of armed vehicles. The team survive so much: a hail of gunfire, Roman nearly drowning in his moving car, armed torpedoes, a heatseeker missile, the sub breaking through the ice to ram and drown them, and the massive explosion of said sub which should incinerate their cars as they shield Dom from the flames. Unreal.

Okay, they went there. So we have to. The best hope to bring down the satellite uploading the dangerous Project Aries program/virus is to launch Tej and Roman into space in a Pontiac Fiero. Attached to rocket engines. It’s totally out of this world … but in the wrong way. We know Elon Musk launched a car into space, but it was inside of the rocket’s second stage before being set free. But here…no extreme heat or cold shielding? Old scuba gear for spacesuits? Duct tape for sealant? Never experienced Zero-G before? No piloting experience? No return trip plan? (Thanks, ISS!) We wonder if even a NASA vet would try this.

F9 pops up high on this list because it triples down on excess. And it all gets exemplified in one sequence as the Fast crew flees a military jungle ambush set up by Dom’s brother Jakob after obtaining part of the Project Aries device. It’s several minutes of insanity—barely eluding gunfire, missiles, landmines, and persistent pursuers. After Jakob steals back the device, they all race to the country’s border. One obstacle: A rickety wooden bridge spanning cliff to cliff. Tej floors it, and he, Roman, and Ramsey race across it as the back end collapses and falls toward the ocean. They barely make it, but they do make it. Jakob roars off the cliff, only to be magnetically picked up by a stealth craft. Dom and Letty? He conveniently (and very accurately) uses the remaining bridge cable as a rope to swing his car to the cliff beyond, where they roll over and over to a dead stop. “Well, that was new,” jokes Letty. By now, we’re just watching a video game.