The Fast and the Furious

A gang of hijackers target trucks for their cargo of expensive electronic equipment. All the LAPD and the FBI have to go on is that the hijackers drove Sport Compact cars. Undercover cop Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) attempts to find out who exactly is stealing the equipment by infiltrating the local racing community with the help of a local auto parts dealer. Brian suspects Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is the leader of a street racing gang that are doing the hijacking, but his suspicions also target other gangs, most notably that of Toretto's rival Johnny Tran.

After O'Connor loses his Mitsubishi Eclipse to Dominic in a race for "pink slips" and it is then destroyed when they are confronted by Johnny Tran, O'Connor tries to gain the trust of Toretto by working with him on repairing and upgrading a burned out Toyota Supra to hand over to him. While doing this, O'Connor is constantly pressured by his superiors to bring the investigation to a satisfactory close, leading him to face a stark choice between the community he has embedded himself into and the woman he has become close to, Dominic's younger sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), or discarding his cover and discovering who from the street gangs is carrying out the hijackings.

According to interviews with director Rob Cohen, the plot serves as a vehicle to convey the street racing culture to mainstream audiences. The story follows the framework of a classic western: the "bad guys" in black Honda Civics hijack an 18-wheeler in the opening sequence. This is an allusion to western cinematography in which the "bad guys in black" hijack the proverbial stagecoach (the 18-wheeler). The scene concludes with a Civic brazenly ducking beneath the moving semi to avoid a collision with highway construction, which is a modern substitute for the chase concluding with a drop from a steep cliff.

Many consider this film to be a remake of the 1991 film Point Break. Both films feature an undercover cop infiltrating a gang of underground competition enthusiasts in order to gain information about who is pulling off a series of heists. In both films the undercover cop arrests the wrong gang first before closing in on the real culprits, who happen to be his newly found friends. More similar still, the protagonist falls for a significant female in the team leader's life, forcing him to ultimately choose whether to take up the life of those he was tasked to spy upon or do his job.