The Fast And The Furious | 2001
- Locations |
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Rob Cohen
Rob Cohen’s Los Angeles-set street-racing movie belts along with the power and speed of a rice rocket. It opens with Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) testing his car in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, 1000 Vin Scully Avenue.
Cohen wanted to emphasise the overlooked neighbourhoods of Los Angeles and sets the world of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) in a picturesque and popular area of Echo Park, north of downtown Los Angeles.
Toretto’s house is 722 East Kensington Road, and ‘Toretto’s market and diner’, where O'Conner insinuates himself into the community, is the nearby friendly local grocery store Bob’s Market, 1234 Bellevue Avenue at Kensington Road. Echo Park is also the neighbourhood of Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, and you might have spotted Bob’s Market alongside the Dodge Challenger as he waits for police messages.
The ‘Racer’s Edge’, the garage at which O'Conner works, is an anonymous building at 1046 North Orange Drive, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood and, no, disappointingly there’s no car on the roof.
The first big nighttime car rally, where O'Conner wagers his car against Toretto, takes place alongside the giant warehouses on Clock Street, off South Alameda Street, just below 7th Street south of Downtown. The huge Alameda Square complex, once warehouses for the goods terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, is now reborn as ROW DTLA multi-use complex.
Photograph: Alain
The ensuing race itself was filmed on Prairie Avenue, between 120th Street and 118th Street, just south of Imperial Highway in Hawthorne.
The motorbike gang scenes were shot in the Little Saigon district of Orange County, way to the southeast of Los Angeles. The white statues are the Vietnamese Cultural Court, 9221 Bolsa Avenue, Westminster, while the Asian gateway is a couple of blocks east at 9631 Bolsa Avenue.
Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) and O'Conner enjoy a date at Cha Cha Cha, 656 North Virgil Avenue at Melrose Avenue in the Virgil Village district of Silverlake. Unfortunately, this lively eaterie, also where Steve Martin and Clare Danes enjoyed a first date together in the 2005 romance (based on Martin’s own novella) Shopgirl, has since been torn down.
O'Conner and Dominic stop off at Neptune’s Net, 42505 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. This great unpretentious biker/surfer hangout was previously seen in classic surf movie Point Break, but was recreated in the studio for Iron Man 3.
The final race, with the train, is on Terminal Way, Terminal Island. The ‘Race Wars’ rally was filmed at San Bernardino International Airport, East Third Street at Del Rosa Drive, San Bernardino.
O'Conner is arrested at Seventh Street and Valencia Street, downtown Los Angeles. There is no ‘El Gato Negro’, this was nothing more than a set built on a vacant lot in El Segundo.
In an homage to Bullitt, O'Conner chases the bikers down the slope of Micheltorena Street in Echo Park (where you can find the mansion of both Scream 3 and Halloween H20) and on to Glendale Boulevard.
