Have a Fast and Furious Father’s Day

Barry Hertz is film editor at the Globe and Mail and author of “Welcome to the Family: The Explosive Story of the Fast and the Furious”.

In a surprising and often nauseating new feature for The New Yorker, journalist Heidi Blake investigates Andrew Tate and his fellow misogynistic charlatans who are poisoning the minds of young people around the world. Like Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary earlier this year about the so-called manosphere, Ms. Blake exposes the poisonous empire of modern-day snake oil salesmen. These are the Buff Brothers who treat women like dirt and promise that all of life’s troubles can be solved by investing in shady money management apps.

In the weeks leading up to Father’s Day, this swirl of hatred stuck with me. In an age when Mr. Tate and his acolytes command the attention of any boy with access to a screen, what hope does a well-meaning father have for raising fine young men?

But a brighter, much healthier paradigm of modern masculinity is hiding in plain sight. It’s a warm, family-friendly realm where men build each other up instead of tearing each other down. A place where women are not only respected but customarily bowed down. And the size of your cryptocurrency wallet doesn’t matter as much as the surroundings of your backyard barbecue.

Of course, we are talking about the movie “Fast and Furious”.

No matter what, Vin says, “Fast X is gloriously stupid, and stupidly brilliant.”

Indeed, the series, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week, is often dismissed as spectacularly stupid. After all, Vin Diesel’s on-screen hero is a monosyllabic meat-eater named Dominic Toretto, whose affinity for Mr. Clean Putty and tank tops makes him sadly resemble Mr. Tate’s own estranged brother.

But the film contains some surprising lessons about modern masculinity. And if we want to keep our sons away from the toxic grip of the manosphere, we should bring them into the warmer, gentler, less furious embrace of the dormosphere than is advertised.

I can hear skeptical voices booming from a quarter of a mile away. Aren’t these the kind of whimsical movies that care more about carburetors than character development? But just a little serious look inside this series reveals that, unlike Hollywood’s other big car-focused franchises, there’s more to “Fast” than meets the eye.

As the proud patriarch of fast poetry, Dom is the perfect symbol of what humans can and should be today. Above all, Dom was devoted to his family, frequently risking his life to protect those he loved, even jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper in Abu Dhabi on the back of a US$3.4 million Lykan Hypersport. As Dom proved in his Fast Five brawl with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s lawman Luke Hobbs, when the two sweaty blockbuster beefs destroyed a year’s worth of drywall and smashed glass, Dom knows when to start a fight, but more importantly, he knows when to stop. And we could all benefit from a little more convenience around the garage, right?

When audiences first meet Dom in 2001’s Fast and Furious, they’re introduced to a gearhead who looks like a bruiser but speaks like a street poet. Before Dom fires a gun or throws a punch, he sits down with Paul Walker’s Brian O’Connor, an undercover cop on his first big shot, to discuss his father. The film’s screenwriter, David Ayer, told me that this moment of camaraderie was an unusual pause in the action for a film Universal Pictures considered a cheesy B-movie. But this scene was essential to unlocking the motivations of a man who felt isolated and disposable. “Why are we spending time tuning the Civic to reach 900 horsepower? What is that enhancement about?” Ayer said. “We needed that soul and personality.”

If young people embrace the manosphere, we’ll face bigger problems than we think.

You’ll never hear the word “soul” out of the mouth of a Manosphere player who views the world through the dichotomous prism of “pimp” and “simp.” But in Fast, everyone is as strong as everyone else, in their own way. Consider the climax of the fifth film, in which Dom’s crew drags a 10-ton bank safe through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. This is a really funny scene, and not just because it involves an actor named Ludacris. But the heist works because Mr. Diesel’s bulging biceps are as essential to the score as the charm of Tyrese Gibson’s hustler Roman Pearce or the reconnaissance skills of Sun Gunn’s Han Lu. Muscle, wit, brains: In Fast, modern man is a collective package built on trust and teamwork, not the contents of one independent alpha.

And while the movie is clearly a product of showbiz capitalism, grossing more than $7.4 billion worldwide, Dom and his family measure their personal wealth strictly by philanthropy. Indeed, the crew stole $100 million worth of cold hard cash during the chase in Rio. But after just one movie, Dom gave up on everything and moved back to his run-down house in L.A.’s working-class Echo Park neighborhood. “Money comes and goes,” Dom says. “The most important thing in life is always the people in this room. Here and now.” If your eyes don’t get cloudy when you see this line, you might need an oil change.

I’ll admit that both Doms and the rest of the manosphere share an abiding fascination with women in bikinis. But while the aesthetic hallmark of the Fast movies is scenes of barely-clothed extras rubbing themselves against cars with enough autoerotic intensity to give David Cronenberg pause, this series is equal-opportunity objectification. Numerous shirtless men are on display as well, their sculpted chests drenched in gallons of baby oil. And, narratively speaking, there isn’t a single decision Dom makes that isn’t driven by a cadre of tough female figures around him. Of particular note is the easily abusive girlfriend Leti, played with great grit and intensity by Michelle Rodriguez.

Dom and Letty’s love affair, as depicted in the little-released short film Los Bandoleros, is an unusually committed one. The film was directed by Diesel as a means of connecting the timeline between the third and fourth Fast films. There are no fist fights or car chases, and the short consists mostly of soft-lit scenes of Dom and Letty staring into each other’s eyes on a beach in the Dominican Republic. The romance is now a quarter-century old, and may represent the longest on-screen relationship in movie history.

Of course, there is a world of difference between Dom’s fiction and Mr. Diesel’s life. The fast star may put his ego aside on screen, but when it comes to behind-the-scenes battles over paydays, creative control, and even the choreography of the series’ many fight scenes, his muscle brotherhood tends to crumble quickly.

Meanwhile, two years ago, Mr. Diesel’s former assistant named Asta Jonathon sued Mr. Diesel for sexual assault, but the case was dismissed in November after an L.A. County Superior Court judge ruled that California law did not apply to the case. (Mr. Jonathon’s lawyer, Matthew T. Hale, said the decision was “based on a legal technicality,” and Mr. Diesel’s lawyer, Brian J. Friedman, said that Mr. Jonathon was “grateful that the court put an end to this pointless litigation.”)

But Domosphere is not the product of one persona, one star. It’s a cinematic constellation of great heroes of the era who know it’s better to ride together than drifting alone. Before the next, and likely last, Fast movie hits theaters in 2028, it’s our duty as proud, progressive fathers to tell our sons to step on the gas, start the NOS, and leave the manosphere where it belongs.