Image via Complex Original
Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto is the boulder-shaped man upon which the Fast and Furious franchise has been built. After starting as a relatively straightforward series about driving cool cars at reckless speeds, the films’ absurdity has increased along with their budget, leading to sequences like the team skydiving inside their vehicles or the Rock destroying a drone with an ambulance or Dom jumping a gold-plated, ruby-encrusted Lykan Hypersport between three Abu Dhabi skyscrapers.
But other than an excuse to string together stunts, the franchise is about a lovey-dovey, street-racing supercrew who only go after people worse than they are. In these films, Dom talks about his team as family a lot—partially because a fair amount of his team is family, but also because it seems the unabashedly sentimental bonds between the drivers make them successful, both in their capers and in their films, which have grossed nearly $4 billion worldwide.
But before we get into Dom’s distinctly hammy quotes, a little context. In 2001’s The Fast and The Furious, back when Dom was about 60 percent less thick, we learn how his father died:
“He was coming up in the pro-stock circuit. Last race of the season, he was coming into the final turn when a driver named Kenny Linder tapped his bumper and put him into the wall at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. I watched my father burn to death. I can still remember him screaming. The people who were there said my father died long before the tanks blew. They said it was me that was screaming.”
A week later, Dom dealt with this by repeatedly bashing Linder’s face with a wrench, leaving him a bulgy, bloody mess, robbing him of his ability to drive. Not the healthiest way to cope with a loss. The retaliation gets Dom banned from the professional racing circuit.
So he starts street-racing and hijacking trucks, which catches the attention of the LAPD. They send in undercover cop Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), who at first seeks to arrest Dom, but then decides he really likes Dom’s sister, Mia, as well as driving cars illegally fast, sparking the beginning of that trio’s bond and Dom’s development into a family man.
Now that you know where he’s coming from, here’s Dom’s five best family quotes.
When You're the Older Brother Who Cheats
Film: Fast & Furious
Year: 2009
In the fourth film, Dom and Brian have a common enemy: Arturo Braga, a drug lord, who has a henchman, Fenix, with a hammer and sickle tattooed on his neck, yet works for a lucrative heroin trafficking business (not super sure how these things go together other than Americans think Communism = Bad. And Heroin = Bad. So Communism + Heroin = Oh boy, look out Super Bad.). Brian works for the FBI and has been assigned to capture them and Dom believes that Fenix killed his ex-girlfriend Letty, who is actually alive, but with a Dom-forgetting case of amnesia.
As they take down the bad guys, Dom saves Brian by crashing his car straight TF into Fenix at the last second. Dom goes to check on a barely conscious Brian who lets Dom know he would have won a race earlier if Dom didn’t bump him at the last second. Dom dismisses it as Brian being brain damaged. Which is very much an older brother thing to say to a younger brother when you cheated to win.
When You're Reminding the Fam What Really Matters
Movie: Fast Five
Year: 2011
In Fast Five, the team gets caught between another drug lord and a gigantic US Marshall, Luke Dobbs (Dwayne Johnson). They’re about to ditch town, when they discover the location of a safe containing $100 million of the drug lord’s money and that Mia is pregnant with Brian’s baby. So naturally, they’ll need some money to start their new life. A hefty cut of $100 million ought to do it. As a final pep talk to the team before the heist, Dom gives that lovely toast, inspiring them to steal the money from the drug lord, then the American government by pulling a safe switcheroo, which Dobbs can’t do anything about except shake his head, like, “Oh, Dom.”
When You Are Reunited With Your Amnesiac Ex
Movie: Fast and Furious 6
Year: 2013
The team has scattered all over the world, enjoying their millions from the last heist. Dobbs isn’t thrilled with getting bamboozled, so in exchange for a pardon, he demands they use their absurdly specialized skills to bring down this film’s bad guy Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who is essentially Dom, but with a far colder approach to his team of mercenaries, which includes the amnesiac Letty.
After Shaw orchestrates a Batman-ass escape scene, Dom and Letty come face to face. Dom gets out of his car slowly, looks Letty in the eyes, says her name in his buttery, yet husky tone and Letty...plugs Dom in the shoulder, gets in her car and drives away. But then Dom drops this nugget of unconditional love and absolutely follows through on that promise by leaping between two bridges to save Letty.
When You're Reminding the Fam It's Time to Grow Up
Movie: Furious 7
Year: 2015
Furious 7 forces Brian to leave his family to pull off One. Last. Job. Which Brian is secretly excited about because it’s hard to spend your weekends coaching Little League after being a globetrotting, street racing multi-millionaire. But Dom sets Brian straight with that quote, which translates to: “Grow up Brian, you’re a dad. You can’t be jumping out of busses that are falling off cliffs anymore.” Good advice. Except that Dom is the reason Brian got into this life in the first place. But still.
When You Realize Death Doesn't Destroy Family
Movie: Furious 7
Year: 2015
So long story short, the gang takes down the bad guys and celebrates at a beach while casually sipping light beer—as they’re wont to do. At this point, the audience is expecting a send-off to Brian because Paul Walker died tragically mid-way through filming.
So the team is admiring Brian and Mia playing with their kid. Then Dom stands up all stoic, about to drive away when he gets asked, “You’re not going to say goodbye?” And Dom takes a moment, just as the beginning keys of “See You Again” trickle in, and he says, “It’s never goodbye,” and says it so soft and soulfully that if you don’t choke up, you’re an android.
He gets in his car and drives off, but Brian catches up to him. Before they speed off, Dom reminisces on all their good times together, while delivering the above reflection.
And then, with a subtlety shown almost nowhere else in this franchise, they split, going down different roads: Brian veering towards a beyond-idyllic sunset and Dom heading straight with the tiniest, warmest, most perfectly melancholy smile on his face.
And that is how Dom Torretto, a boy who dealt with his father’s racetrack cremation by using a wrench, turned into the man who recognizes that family bonds aren’t broken by death. He will continue on. Because that’s what families do. Even when a member passes, you keep getting back together to do the same shit over and over and over again.
The Fate of the Furious comes out April 14.