{"id":669377,"date":"2026-05-14T17:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/669377\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T17:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:34:09","slug":"vin-diesel-and-his-fast-furious-family-steal-the-spotlight-at-cannes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/669377\/","title":{"rendered":"Vin Diesel and his Fast & Furious family steal the spotlight at Cannes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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From left: Meadow Walker, Jordana Brewster, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Neal H. Moritz attend the the Fast And the Furious screening during the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on Wednesday.Aurore Marechal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The second day of the Cannes Film Festival featured a wealth of high-tier cinema, the kind of prestige-level fare that has cemented the annual French Riviera extravaganza as the ultimate global showcase for the seventh art. <\/p>\n

There was Butterfly Jam<\/a>, a challenging but mostly rewarding family drama starring Barry Keoghan that marked the English-language debut from dissident Russian director Kantemir Balagov. A few hours later, Japanese master Koji Fukada screened his gentle, achingly sincere drama Nagi Notes<\/a>, which traces the relationship between two women in a rural village. And then rising American provocateur Jane Schoenbrun unveiled the delightfully surreal meta-horror comedy Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma<\/a>, whose geysers of blood and Cronenbergian preoccupation with exploring bodily orifices where no orifices are traditionally found makes it a strictly art-house-only offering.<\/p>\n

Yet by far the biggest event of the day, a screening that eclipsed all the many ostensibly prestigious Cannes favourites, arrived in the chiselled form of one very big, very bald, very mumbly mega-star: Vin Diesel. <\/p>\n

Barry Hertz: Cannes jury president Park Chan-wook is ready for anything, including political debate<\/a><\/p>\n

The pater familias of the Fast & Furious family stormed the Croisette Wednesday \u2013 well, early Thursday morning \u2013 for a special late-night \u201cCannes Classics\u201d screening of the franchise\u2019s very first film, The Fast and the Furious, which is celebrating its perhaps improbable 25th anniversary this year. <\/p>\n

Sporting a dark black suit embroidered with the glitter-crusted image of a Dodge Charger (the vehicle of choice for Diesel\u2019s on-screen hero, Dom Toretto) and the words \u201cFast Forever\u201d (the title of the series\u2019 forthcoming 11th instalment), Diesel basked in the unadulterated glow of the paparazzi while ascending the steps of the Grand Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Lumi\u00e8re. <\/p>\n

Diesel wasn\u2019t the only Fast attendee, either. Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez, his co-stars from that first 2001 film, were walking the red carpet to screams and camera clicks, as were longtime series producer Neal H. Moritz, Universal Pictures chief Donna Langley and Meadow Walker, daughter of the late Paul Walker. <\/p>\n

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The back of Vin Diesel’s suit had glitter-crusted image of a Dodge Charger and the words ‘Fast Forever,’ which is the title of the series\u2019 forthcoming 11th instalment.Scott A Garfitt\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

In between signing autographs and mugging for the armada of photographers, Diesel frequently clasped his hands in the prayer formation and stared silently at the heavens above. This is a man who knows just how lucky he is to steal a moment in the Cannes spotlight, not unlike the time that Dom made off with a bank vault full of cash in the franchise\u2019s fifth instalment, Fast Five. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a midnight screening like this in my whole life,\u201d Diesel told the sold-out crowd, many still adhering to the black-tie dress code needed for earlier, ostensibly classier screenings. \u201cIt\u2019s not like this movie hasn\u2019t been out for a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Diesel\u2019s Cannes invasion isn\u2019t so ridiculous. And I\u2019m not just saying this because I wrote the literal book on the franchise<\/a> (a copy of which I elected not to toss onstage during the showing, mostly because I didn\u2019t want to cause an international incident). For starters, this year\u2019s edition of Cannes desperately needed some kind of big juicy Hollywood spectacle, with the lineup conspicuously absent any new releases from the major studios, or even much in the way of high-wattage American indies.<\/p>\n

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Guests arriving on the red carpet before the screening of the film in Cannes.IAN LANGSDON\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Whereas past editions of Cannes have found room to celebrate the world premieres of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning<\/a>, Hollywood executives appear to be rethinking the strategy of debuting their biggest projects in front of a sometimes hostile festival audience. Then there are the mounting costs involved in ferrying all that high-priced talent over to Europe. This year, there are only two U.S. titles in the official competition, both of them \u2013 James Gray\u2019s crime thriller Paper Tiger and Ira Sachs\u2019s same-sex romance The Man I Love \u2013 not exactly the kind of multiplex-ready fare that sparks the feverish headlines the festival desires. <\/p>\n

Enter Fast & Furious, which is in fact no stranger to Cannes. In 2021, when the festival went ahead even as it was hobbled by the pandemic, organizers staged the French premiere of F9: The Fast Saga on the beach along the Croisette to enthusiastic crowds. Diesel also has a long history with the festival himself, having lugged over his short film Multi-Facial to Cannes back in 1995, long before the words \u201cNOS\u201d or \u201cLos Bandoleros\u201d entered the pop-culture lexicon. <\/p>\n

More crucially, though, is the fact that the Fast & Furious films are the Platonic ideal of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster. The series is one of the most commercially successful of all time, certainly. Its 11 instalments, if we\u2019re counting the 2019 spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, which we definitely are, have notched more than US$7.3-billion at the box office. But the movies have broken many more cultural barriers, and done so while facing seemingly insurmountable challenges (the death of a star, the ego battles of its lead meatheads, the disruption of the pandemic), that the series deserves as big a spotlight as Cannes is able to offer. <\/p>\n

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The films have turned indie actors such as Diesel and Rodriguez into superstars, and coaxed presumably above-all-this Oscar-winners (Charlize Theron, Brie Larson, even Dame Helen Mirren) into embracing their inner action heroes. The movies have pioneered concepts of on-screen diversity, before any talk of \u201cwoke\u201d existed. And they\u2019ve radically advanced digital effects technology, a result of producers having to jerry-rig the film\u2019s seventh instalment after Walker died in an off-screen car crash midway through production.<\/p>\n

Most of all, though, the films make for exceptionally fun times at the movies. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure we would\u2019ve had The Fast and the Furious in competition, but it is a phenomenon in the contemporary history of the cinema,\u201d Thierry Fr\u00e9maux, Cannes\u2019 general delegate, told reporters earlier this week. \u201cThere are 10 of them! And some are absolutely fantastic!\u201d <\/p>\n

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From left: Jordana Brewster, Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez on the red carpet.Andreas Rentz\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It was a sentiment that the audience inside the Lumi\u00e8re, the festival\u2019s largest auditorium, took to heart. Diesel, Rodriguez and Brewster were greeted like rock stars, while every fan-favourite moment from the first film earned the kind of raucous applause reserved for a Palme d\u2019Or winner. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m only here once in my whole life to come with a film that you, the head of the most prestigious film festival in the world, where every artist in the world wants to be recognized, you\u2019re calling the film we did 25 years ago a classic,\u201d Diesel told Fr\u00e9maux onstage. \u201cHow profound is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time the screening ended in the wee hours of the morning, with the crowd giving a teary-eyed Diesel an extended standing ovation, it felt like Cannes could indeed wrap up then and there. Save your Pedro Almod\u00f3var and Cristian Mungiu films for next year. And maybe change the name of that big festival award. The \u201cPalme d\u2019Om\u201d has a nice ring to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: From left: Meadow Walker, Jordana Brewster, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Neal H.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,2922],"class_list":["post-669377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-noastack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}