The Worst Idea Of All Time - 43: Hot Rat Bucket w/ Travis and Griffin McElroy

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Tim and Guy are joined by Travis and Griffin McElroy to enjoy their first(ish) watch of 2 Fast 2 Furious. There is a heavy divide in the ranks as to whether the movie was actually good or not, but the film’s quality quickly takes a conversational backseat to the real star of the watch: a very unique torture idea that all can agree is well worth discussing. In this outing, we have no Dom Toretto, but the stars are still out to shine, including Eva Mendez, the introduction of Roman Pearce (Tyrese) and possibly Tej (unsure, the boiz haven’t seen the first movie). Paul Walker’s beautiful eyes overpower any lack of acting chops and ejection seats are cool.Get event and livestream tickets for the TWIOAT 10th Anniversary Special at worstideaofalltime.com! On Feb 10th, exactly a decade after Tim and Guy's first viewing of Grown-Ups 2, the boyz return to Adam Sandler's 2013 opus for a night of reflection, revelry and regret at the Q Theatre in Auckland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Music Music Music Music Music Music 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Hello everybody and welcome to a really exciting episode of the worst idea of all time, Fast and Furious season. I've got Guy Montgomery to the right of me. As ever.

And joining us digitally, we have two McElroy brothers completing the trifecta that I really wanted to get for this season. I'm so glad they're here. Please give it up for Travis McElroy and Griffin McElroy. Give it up. It's about family. It's about family. I am also to your right, geographically. If you drew a direct ray from your right, it would eventually hit me.

And I think, yeah, I think that I'm to Griffin's right. Yeah. South right. So we're all aligned perfectly. perfectly very cool we are all to the right of each other geographically and politically which oh yeah huge huge for us which of the films did our brother get to watch just curious he was a long it was inferior to this he was watching like f8 or f9 f8 or f9 he was like in a different whole different fucking tone he was in different genre of movie was f8 called fate of the furious yes travis yeah do you know how they thought to do that what well because a t e fate it's um yeah oh shit yeah i know i don't know if you call it word play or number play a little bit of both actually made it made me mad it still does burns me up that they call it fast x instead of fasten like they could have it could have been

fast in your seat belt and they didn't do it they missed it yeah oh yeah that reminds me actually i think this is a good opportunity for us to all wrap our merch and our shirts i've got a fast x crew um t-shirt on which i got from my sister-in-law. This is something that only the visual effects team got and I'm not allowed to sell it. I have to destroy the shirt once I'm done with it. Holy shit.

When will you be done with it? How do you know when you've used it up? When it falls off my body on its last thread. That's when it'll go in the bin. Oh, has it been so... When you finish Fast One, the one time, it'll just descend. It'll turn to light and be like, my job here is done.

I think the sleeves will fall off and it will turn into a Vin Diesel style tank top, which aptly actually is what the style of top you're wearing, Trav. Yes. Oh, my super yaki, I live your life a quarter mile at a time sleeveless tank that i put on this morning like i can't wait forgetting i had to do

other things bb was sick today i had to pick her up from school i had to worry about hey where's my that's a fucking shame man hey alternatively when you're done with it that t-shirt could evolve and just become two sizes larger to become a paul t-shirt in Too Fast, Too Furious. I've loved Paul Walker's steez all season. You're the closest of us to his. I love the way that guy dresses. He's even wearing, and it's a different style of short that's kind of come back around, but he's got this short that hangs just over the knee. He's sort of wearing Juggalo hand-me-downs a little bit because

ty reese's pants are huge and walker's shirt is huge and i wonder if there was a point where they both walked out of their trailers wearing huge shirts and huge pants and they said we can't both do huge shirts no chance you can have huge shirt i'll take huge pants well i mean you're wearing a singlet which suggests that you're a fan of the franchise can we just get a little bit of background on both of your guys relationship with the fast and the furious cinematic universe uh i was a late i was a late comer to it i saw for whatever reason fast five in theaters was like the first one i that's actually not true the first one i watched was tokyo drift because i lived with a man with very specific media consumption tastes as my first roommate,

and he was really into Tokyo Dress. So we watched it, and I was like, I don't get it. And then I watched Fast Five in theaters, and that's still my favorite hands down to this day. Still, I think the high bar of quality for the thing. Nothing has lived up to it. But I think I thought I had seen them all until this morning when I watched Too Fast, Too Furious and realized I have not seen this film before this day.

You haven't seen two. So I completed the set today, this morning. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm trying to remember when Fast 6 came out because if I remember correctly, it came out in 2013. But when in 2013? Oh, yeah.

Okay. So my memory is correct. So Teresa and I got married in 2013 october 2013 and we went to scotland for our honeymoon and we had a long overnight flight and i can't sleep on planes so i did not sleep at all uh flew uh to charles de gaulle and charles de gaulle to scotland so in that time i watched fast having never seen any of them before, but they were all on the Delta thing. So I watched Fast 1, Fast 2, Fast 4, Fast 5, and Fast 6. No Tokyo Drift?

No, I skipped 3 because I knew that it didn't follow the Walker storyline. Oh, wow. I've never seen it. Still to this day, I haven't seen 3. They seem like they would be the perfect kind of movies to just smash through on an airplane ride. Yeah, it was amazing. There's some airplane-related hijinks in one of them,

if memory serves, that I have to imagine they cut a good portion out of. It's very late on. It's not real, Griffin. It's all made up. It's movie magic, bud. These movies are still kind of tethered to reality, these early days ones. Yes.

Yes, are they? Are you sure about that, though? Yeah, actually, I think you're right, Griffin, because I was so blown away by this movie. This is completely different to the other ones, like wholesale different. And the closest thing, I think, in terms of a stylistic reference point was anime.

There are so many shots and sequences where it's like the camera angles are animated they're using um blue screen or green screen with how the cars are going really fast and they're like depiction of how speed looks is super borrowed from anime it's crazy just you just clicked it into me because i was trying to place what the like nos uh like effect remind me of it reminds me of speed racer it's speed racer speed racer that's what it is you guys y'all are being awful though it's like really really really shitty speed racer the way you talk about the effect the effects in this movie are incredible what about the way that every single nos button in everyone's car is just printed on a label maker that says NOS? There's got to be another red button somewhere that is like eject.

Like, you know, if that's the only red button they have in the car, why would you label it? Wouldn't they just know? Yeah. For when your friend borrows your car. Your friend's like, hey, I need to go. Can I go grab groceries? Yeah, but the butt don't. Oh, let me label them.

Before you go, hold on, hold on. It's not even the way, it's not even the quality of the graphics. It's the quality of, like, the physics. Because the way that they will jump between practical, actual-ass cars driving on those hot Miami streets to a very close up of Tyrese's face to a digi car that just goes to the right. Like it just goes right with your tone. Young man, guy and I had a sensational morning watching the journey,

the journey that we have been on from F nine, nine times and so on and so forth to get to today. This was a breath of fresh air and we had a lovely fucking time. I am immediately learning that our perspective has warped as I hear you guys talk in real terms about the movie we just watched. And I was in there. I was like, this is a movie, man. We were so gassed up.

This is how they make movies, man. This is light. This is fun. It occurred to me as i was watching about it thinking from your guys perspective from your guys perspective they keep reining themselves in further and further like you know what the last movie that was too much this was we need to anchor it more in reality that's right this was constraint this was discipline like we we met ludicrous we met tyrese you know yeah Even Mendes showed up.

Did not know that was going to happen. That's huge money for us. I think you guys are so close to that old ejecto-cito because you could have watched Manchester by the Sea this morning and been like, woo! Now, was it weird to you guys On your journey That you're like Where the fuck is Vin Diesel

Yeah Or anyone Anyone From any of them Except Paul Walker I did not know He was not in this I mean it was

Tyrese is the star And he comes back You know Roman's in most of them Not all of them And Ludacris as well I think he's just there Do you know

It was fucking cool I think this franchise Is so much better Without Vin Diesel And also It wasn't a total shock that there was no vin diesel because the way that we've staggered it the last one we watched was tokyo drift so it wasn't just no vin diesel it was no anyone yeah it was just like this random assembly of people playing cars in tokyo what i said to guy when we were watching it is it's like this franchise got off on such an exciting foot because it was look i haven't seen the first one but i think that one's a big vin diesel thing and then we've got this which is paul walker it's a buddy comedy this

it is and then and then it got and then the third one they put out just randomly followed this guy sean so every time they're just it's look it's kind of like disney's cars universe it's just the theme is cars and we're looking at a different person each movie and it tangentially connects together but then they got so bogged down after four that they had to follow vin and the family and it's like oh i have seen people and i sent griffin a graphic i found because i know it's been a big dialogue of people comparing Fast and the Furious to Point Break and it's like if they finish the first

Point Break and said let's make a Point Break 2 Bodhi's not in this one don't worry about it this time it's Keanu Reeves and somebody he played football with okay you guys like that okay great now here's a third Point Break but this time they're ice skating what's happening man man i can't

believe how hot you guys are on this flick it is a genuine shock to me okay you tell why don't you tell us about the movie you just saw i i've i found myself profoundly unexcited by the film that i watched today okay i think that is because, like Travis suggested, they have reined it in dramatically from swinging a big safe around the streets of Rio de Janeiro and smashing up 100,000 cop cars. Jumping a car through a building. Jumping a car through a building,

jumping over a ravine, smashing into a space satellite with a car. And in this one, they jump a car into a boat yeah which is not that cool to like it's not it's not the two coolest vehicles just crash together aside from that you get a level of full-blown police academy zaniness yeah there's some blues brothers pileups there really is a lot of a lot of like tyrese uh putting a cinder block on a truck's uh accelerator to smash it into a couple cop cars and then giving us a full-blown kevin mccallister like yes lighting a windshield on fire with i guess i was confused do you know what is

blowing my mind is hearing you describe this not in disparaging terms but it's like you know this is not really hitting for me and then everything you're describing is reminding me how much i enjoyed it like i can't even fathom how you guys are going on we put a big highlighter under the the hot the windscreen but that was so cool to distract someone by going up and pretending to wash their windscreen but actually you're just spraying gasoline on it then setting it on fire that's so cool the scene where they i they try i had a similar feel i had a similar watch as griffin except i enjoyed it thoroughly right because i was watching it the whole time in this weird stuck in the middle where i have such clear memories of fast and furious one right and i vaguely like all the rest of them start to blend

together and this one i was like oh right this is where this one falls but as a contrast the jump from one to this and now it's just like we're full in it like it like to take it to a point a reference what you might get for me this was like uh for you guys if you watch point break and then they made a point break too where this time now keanu reeves is a professional bank robber right it's just like he's he's the best he's the yeah i wrote it down because it cracked my shit up when he shows up to the drag race and suki goes oh shit it's brian oh the first time those four words have ever been spoken sequentially no one's ever seen a

brian coming and been like oh shit did you see the size of his west coast choppers t-shirt jesus christ it's brian oh shit what's he got in those fucking cargo shorts damn brian it is brian it's fine it's fucking legit brian i love that i love his tease i love his energy i don't think his acting is that crash hot in this movie. Doesn't need to be though I sort of imagined the journey of Ludacris' performance was that he became less invested as the franchise dragged out and so his

acting became worse in the later films but I don't think, I just think maybe he's not a very controlled actor He's got something to prove in this one He entered weak and then he was quite good for a bit and then I thought scene to scene he was given quite a varied performance. I am deeply offended

on behalf of Luda because I came away from this film thinking his was the best performance in the whole movie. Absolutely. I thought he was amazing. Reserved. Nuanced. I believed that he was an auto body mechanic living in Miami. It felt very real.. Tyrese is like

at a 10 the whole time. The whole flick. The whole time. And Paul Walker's at a 2. And I feel like Luda is riding the wave of like, how big should I be right now? No, no. Listen. I respect both of you gentlemen but I've got to pump the brakes on this.

The only time they've done it in the whole movie. Go on. They never pump the brakes. Tyrese is excellent in this flick. He is so good. He comes in. He has an intensity that Guy and I have not seen in this whole franchise because we've done it in reverse order.

There is a depth and a gravity to his performance that has been sight unseen so far. But then we're like, whoa, he's so different. I guess this is how his acting career started and then we get drip feed the little moments of comedy and then they grow and blossom into some beautiful comedic i legit think that those guys have good chemistry like i think you know obviously it's crazy for people to watch the first one to see this and have no vin it feels crazy to me that they would make this which i understand was not actually revered critically

upon release and then abandon this chemistry when you get to the third one yeah well abandon everything when you get to the third one so like i i was really just you know that even met like the faster furious franchise how many good looking people they get in uh the movies there is a lack of sexual chemistry and sexuality in every single one of these movies that blows my mind it's like they get so many hot people together on screen and they're like but they're all aces i when even mendez and paul walker kind of flirting and like coming right up to the line of getting together i'm like just give us just give me some form of release i love the number of times in this movie that tyrese has given Paul Walker a hard time for almost hooking up with Eva Mendes. And I'm like, I don't know what flirting you're watching, Tyrese.

But at most, they're kind of looking at each other like they're 12 years old and blushing. I don't know what you're seeing. Now, Tej and Suki, that is a relationship that I can sink my teeth into. There's a lot happening there that I really like. I'm rooting for those kids. I think they're gonna make you recover.

They skip the, they have horny in the very first scene and then they skip that. It's all like, they're just basically settling into a lovely relationship with them.

Their relationship is grounded in a reality that is boring to me. Yeah. They love each other in a very real way. It's like, what Guy is saying is he's seen that love play out a billion times yeah i the bar for the barrier of entry to become a recurring

character in this franchise is so profoundly low they have had characters who have come in in the middle of the thing and just been like what's up i do hacking great you're in seven you're in eight you're in nine you're in ten suki they set up like that's right she drives this fucking badass mitsubishi eclipse with a little screen with a little anime version of her on it and she does art she's like check out my art and it doesn't close up on the art you're like wow suki that's amazing art and then she has this whole relationship with ludacris and then she is never seen again I have to say just because you brought it up sorry just

a quick one of the best line reads in the entire film is when the two guys notice Suki doing the art and Tyrese is yeah she's really good and Paul Walker just goes yeah she's good she's the best something about the fucking offhanded delivery of that line they just run through the rest of the plot which was so funny to me it's the limited a very grant not in the world of the movie grounded

but like it is delivered how you might talk where you're sort of responding something someone said but kind of just talking to yourself he's kind of jealous of it. Like, I wish I could draw like her. Yeah, she's good. She's the best. That actor who plays Suki retired in 2009. That was six years after this one. I do feel, I don't know. Well, the next one was Drift

and they didn't start pulling people back in until after that. That's true. It would have been wild if Tokyo Drift had one character from the series in it yeah recurring and it was suki who would never be seen again uh yeah i can see your point i can see your point griffith's like they they gave a lot of exposition to be like here's a tent pole here's someone we could build around this is you know this is someone you build a team around and

then they just go nah we just told you that this woman could paint to borrow a bonus of the heart scale she was magnetic yeah hugely magnetic on screen i just great so you guys have also just made me think not to connect another point break thing but the griffin and i i know this for a fact got introduced we got introduced to paul walker via a little movie called meet the deetles yeah from dis Disney where he and his brother played surfer dudes who ended up working at Yellowstone and it was a whole thing. But he was like, whoa, I'm kind of a big guy. Everything he said was like that. And then it was like

they cast him in this and they're like, pull it back. And it's very much that same Keanu Bill and Ted two point break of like, do less. Do less. Less, less, less. So reserved. Just kind of mumble everything, less, less, less. So reserved. Just kind of mumble everything you say. Mumble more.

Thank you. Perfect. He's, he's really wild. Is it different? It's been a while since I've watched the other fast and the, he gets, he gets a little spicier later on.

Yeah. He gets a little bit more juiced up and I think he's got a clearer handle on whose character is and what he's doing. Like in this one, he does feel a bit lost at sea sometimes. But I honestly do find I get lost in those eyes so easily that all is forgiven. Really hard to make it matter when he looks so good. What do we all think of Eva Mendes' performance?

Because she's probably got the most acting clout of anyone in the film. I thought she was really good. I thought she was amazing. And then once again, I looked it up and I was like so she comes back right i know she comes back she has like a tiny cameo in five and a picture in x wait she's in five she's in the post-credit sequence in five oh that lady dies and then eva mendes is working alongside the rock and shows him a picture of lady from you lost your shit when that well i was like and i didn't know that even men is in at all so I was like okay that's pretty crazy because I've seen

all the movies after this and she doesn't come back. Like what the fuck is Eva Mendes doing swatting through a post credit sequence for no payoff. Yeah.

Even then it doesn't make sense though. Like obviously it just didn't work out. They must have wanted her back and then it didn't pan out for whatever reason. Does anyone want to do the rough contours of the plot of this i don't let me say i'll be curious

to hear this because this is my main problem with the movie is that nothing really happened not that much shit happens in the film i feel like yeah go ahead trap go go so paul walker he's he's deep in the racing scene of miami, but he gets arrested by customs agents. And so they're like, hey, we're going to recruit you because there's a guy who's going to be doing a thing. And we don't know what that thing is and when he's going to do it. But we do know he needs drivers because Eva Mendez is on the inside. She's going to tell us. But we haven't heard from her in a while.

Maybe she's flipped. Don't worry about it. And they get a guy who knows nothing about cars to be his partner. And he's like, no, no, no. I have to get my friend to, I'll tell you from the first one, has not been mentioned yet. And it turns out we have a deep history together. And we're going to fight each other. But it turns around pretty quickly. Now we've been recruited.

And even Mendez also recruited some other thugs, I guess, to kind of cover our tracks. And now we're going to race to go get a car that's been impounded. There's a cigar in there. Awesome. So then they're like, yeah, you're in. In a couple days, I've got a job for you. But let's hang out a bunch until then. Let's hang out, like, a lot until this job.

By the way, the job is. You guys seem cool. Watch me put a rat on this man's belly. You might recognize him from The Dark knight i think yeah yeah so they put a rat on the man's belly no different guy different guy and i would argue frankly eva mendez deserves an oscar for the faces she makes while holding that man's mouth while there's a rat in a hot bucket i reckon the faces she's making are what the fuck is why did you ask me to do this? Hypothetically, I'm your girlfriend.

What are you doing? I'd like to think I was making similar faces. I found that pretty gross. It's like he's doing it. Hold on. You were disturbed. Time out in the storyline. Time out. You were disturbed.

There's a torture scene in this film where they torture a police, a supposedly crooked police officer. I don't think he's crooked. I don't think he is either. They did pick, they picked a character actor who we have seen play crooked police officers at least 18 times. And then it's like, no, but he's a good one. They torture him into, quote, giving them a 15-minute window of time to do this crime. The crime is to drive money from one place to another in Florida. That's right.

That's it. That's the job is to drive money from one place to another in Florida. And they need a 15-minute window. There's only one way to do it. Five involves stealing a whole safe from the mountaintop complex of a crooked And this one's like, what's the job? Drive money from one Florida part to another Florida part. Go!

Begin. But you were scared and upset by the hot rat bucket, which is not, you can't do that to a person and have it actually go the way that they made it look like it was going. It was so visceral. Let me explain to people who haven't seen the movie what the plan with this torture device is. You get a rat, Probably a hungry rat.

You get a man and you put him down and you lift his shirt up so his belly's exposed. That's right. Kind of like the first Matrix movie. Wait, he cut his shirt open with a butterfly knife. Yeah, that was cool. He had a butterfly knife and said, this isn't enough. I need a rat in a bucket. So he grabs a rat, holds it by the tail, puts it on the guy's bare belly.

A big rat. He grabs a metal bucket, puts that down, then picks up a handy-dandy blowtorch, which everyone's got to hand, and starts heating up the bucket. So if they don't squeal, if they don't give you the info that you want, the rat presumably will eat through the person's stomach to get out because they can't make it through the bucket. And the man screams it's biting me it's biting me yeah and so what you saw was a bucket being put on a man's belly

and then he yelled and you're like this is too fucking much because if you put a metal bucket on a man's belly and you blow torch it the bucket's gonna do more damage than the fucking rat is more than that can i tell you the flaw in mr varone's plan here he wasn't asking for information he was just asking of the guy to say yes to a request that he later didn't do so what should have happened he should have pulled out the rat and then like i need you to give me a 50 minute window and the guy should have said okay yeah man for sure yeah you got it bud let me go now you got it man I've already got the rat in bucket an affidavit it's not notarized

what are you talking about in retrospect you're so right because this makes so little sense that I had punched up it to a version where it does make sense in the retelling which is not how it happened in the movie but the only way that you kind of could pull this torture device off. So let's get back to the plot. So we've got our

15 minute window. I'm not ready to move on from this scene either. How is it I was the only one who was disturbed by it? I just found it super uncomfortable. I imagined the rat burrowing into the belly button. I hated it too. That's what was bothering me. Of course you were.

But then he starts yelling and varroa is like eva mendes cover his mouth and it's like you didn't have a place perfect what you didn't have a plan for this if you're being tortured with a rat that's gonna eat its way through your guts and someone and you start screaming of course and then someone's like i'm gonna cover your mouth up with my hands now. There's no way you don't bite their hands, much like the rat is biting. So he was just like doing this and yelling while a hot bucket was on his tummy. There was nothing about this that felt.

And then Verone's like, oh, by the way, if you don't do it, I'm going to put the rat on your wife's stomach and your kid's stomach. And I was like, whoa, lead with that. It's lead with that. So specific. If you don't do this, I'm going to give your wife and kids a hot rat belly treatment. Just a thing for clarity for anyone who hasn't seen it. This is my signature mood.

I'm Carter Rat Belly Verone. Verone has access to guns. Yes, I have the guns. Guns exist in this movie. Two proud hitmen who will kill kids for him he doesn't have to do rat belly to him when those hitmen are holding his arms akimbo you know they're thinking not the rat belly thing just put the blowtorch on his belly just what are you doing there's so many better ways what why involve a rat? The rat's having a bad day.

The bucket alone is fine. Again, boss? All right. Put me out of the bucket. I also love he does it as a moment, too, to be like, this is like a test for Tyrese and Paul Walker. Except even the most hardened, like, actual criminals will be like, what the fuck?

I don't want to work with this guy. It does give it this nice veneer of Bond villain-ness though. I think they're trying so hard to make this guy a Bond villain. They're like, what is an elaborate way that this guy could torture someone involving animals? And he's always got a cigar and he clearly doesn't smoke cigars. It's a great shot. He's just holding it.

Yeah, when he first, when they retrieved the cigar from the impounded car, then he like cuts it, lights it, and then the next shot he's walking, he just throws a full cigar. He fucking geeks it out of the way. Throws it into his pool. Threw it into his own pool. Don't do that.

So, anyways, enough about the Argentinian. No, I'm not done with this scene. I'm not done with this scene yet. It's, it's, this is the linchpin of this entire operation he needs drivers to get his money from his trailer which is being watched to a boat dock where he can dip out with all of his money and in order to do this he has hired two drivers and he has also tried to convince a man to give him the exact opportunity to do this crime that he needs by putting a hot rat on his belly. Why not show up to the trailer park where they're being watched

by several cops with several buckets and several rats and just in this fantasy world. Or guys with guns. Or guys with guns and just kill them and take the money. Nothing that happens in this film makes any sense it's incredible yeah yeah you you're on a run so you continue no it's just this film has had so much this series has had so much fun with like cause and defect and the the physical impossibilities of driving a car through space and this is the furthest stretch of

the imagination incredible to have it laid out so bare because i really can't see the forest for the trees inside of the fast universe but yeah you're right this is like the number one money king like the kingpin gangster in miami and to pull off his final operation to like exit you know the eject button no now that you're on their side i'm saying fuck all you guys this is lock stock lock stock And this is getting a pig hungry enough To chew through human bones This is a cool villain thing to do I agree but His exit strategy is to hire two strangers

Put a rat on someone's belly To say can I have 15 minutes please To harken back to home alone Hey could I have 15 minutes please If I could just That would be so cool I love this rat. Can I say?

This is my pet rat. I don't want him to have to dig through your belly. That's going to be hard on him. That's going to be hard on me. Please, just let me have 15 minutes. And you think Eva Mendes is enjoying this? Look at her face. No.

All of us hate this. Look at Paul Walker. I'm losing so much respect in his beautiful eyes. It's revolting. What about I will give you $100,000 to look the other way for 15 minutes. That is a good idea, guy. $5,000, $8,000 is probably enough. This guy clearly, he goes to the club of a guy who is a supervillain in Miami while he's a cop.

He's clearly heavily compromised. You could probably throw him $2,500 to look the other way for 15 minutes but also what was he gonna do because there's already a team there's like six people there whose job is to watch it is he gonna be like no let him go no wait hold on 14 30 14 31 14 yeah hold on just wait a second okay now him. That's right, because the deal was established. He was like, okay, get the hot rat bucket off me. I agree to do this thing. And then you assume that the impetus is on him to come up with some villainous plan of his own to create a decoy for all the cops. That never happens. Never, ever, ever.

He's just on the radio control. He doesn't even appear to have that much influence all he needs to do for his wife and children to not get the hot rat bucket is to do nothing yeah and so we watch him and he does nothing for a little bit and then at the seventh second he says oh fuck i can't do it. And he calls all of them to go to the toilet. I didn't think about what I was going to say ahead of time. Ah, damn it. Just as a sidebar, how cool is it at the start when the Universal logo gets bolted onto it?

So fucking sick, dude. Fucking crazy. I haven't seen such a divergence from a studio logo since the first Matrix movie. It was truly awe-inspiring. Another Keanu Reeves. At the end of the movie, how come

Paul Walker and Tyrese hated and distrusted and didn't want to work with the cops at all anymore? It went from a point where they were like, we gotta fucking chase this guy down and get him and stop him before he gets away with the money and even Mendez. Should we get the million cops that are chasing us to help?

No way, man. Fuck that and fuck this. They don't understand. Absolutely. I agree with you, Paul Walker. It is confusing that you were a cop a little bit ago and that they're trying to stop the bad guy from getting away and you're like, no, no, no, let's crash into this boat now.

And to be fair, Roman went to jail for three years, which we heard about constantly. Oh, did they mention that. So he hates all cops. What I was trying to track is, were all the cops on the same side? Because I got a bit confused at the end where maybe we were dealing with one municipal police force, and then there were feds, and they weren't quite aligned? So there was FBI, which I think was Bilkins was FBI. And then the Customs, which I think is atf or whatever they were there but the problem with the cops is they had cops on

payroll okay and all right they were like we can't we don't know who's ruined house well okay but what about their relationship with the two hitmen that sort of rode along with paul walker and tyrese because i'll tell you man they would go from one moment like, I got a gun at your head, I'm going to fucking kill you, to the next moment like, nice driving, dude. Yeah, didn't one of them say out loud towards the end? I like you. I like you. Yeah.

I like you, Paul. I like you. Listen, I've fallen in love with you in a major way, but listen, this can't be. We're star-crossed lovers, Paul Walker. Can you not imagine meeting, spending some time with Paul Walker? He's driving you around. Like, even if you started the day being like,

I really don't like this guy, at some point you'd be like, fuck, I can't help this. I like you. I like you, Paul Walker. When they finally take that man out, they beat the shit out of him relentlessly for a good extra minute for laughs. They keep coming back to it. They keep coming back and just kicking it.

This man opened up his heart to them a moment ago. This man, I mean, I suppose he gets a better treatment than being blasted at Mach 5 into a probably gator-filled swamp by turns with the ejector seat. I'm shocked. I mean, I guess it's a testament to the verisimilitude of this film that they don't have gators on hand to chomp that guy. In mid-area. In later films, you do feel like a gator would show some extra detail.

I think in this movie, it's still that they've got that line between hero and villain. Because we're dealing with two guys who are bad boys, but they don't want to kill anyone. So we're pulling guns at people, but we're not shooting them. Except for the one street racer who they're competing with in like the the part where they're trying to get the car out of impact who gets crushed by an 18 wheeler they detail it like you know so much of the physics and the way that the cars move isn't real in this franchise but

then when that car's trying to shoot the gap between those two like 18 wheelers it starts bouncing between them it feels so real real. It goes so surreal. Swings around, gets caught under the ties and just fucking destroyed. Crunched. Do you guys think that you would have enjoyed the rat belly scene, found it more believable if Cole Hauser, Irish-German ethnicity actor Cole Hauser

hadn't been focused so hard on pretending to be Argentinian. Do you think maybe if he could have maybe not had to be Argentinian he could have played it a little better? That man's vibe was so hard to get a fix on. Because I at one point described him as dime store Matthew McConaughey.

Because he's got a very boyish, handsome face. But there's no ruggedness there. And to have the kind of depth that you need as a supervillain who's there getting hot buckets on top of rats on top of tummies, you need a certain gruffness. If it had been Statham, I would fucking believe that that rat's going through the tummy. Statham is not heady enough.

Statham's just, oh, I'm going to punch you until you do what I want. He doesn't have it in him to be like, I'm going to fucking heat up a bucket. You know, like, he didn't workshop this. You know, do you think that the other henchmen knew? Or is he like, hey, I've got an idea for tonight. Just bring a bucket and a rat. I'm trying to think. I'm just trying to think.

Let me see how it goes. I do not think this is the first time he's done the hot bucket. Yeah, I hadn't considered that this was the debuting of a new torture technique. On the drive home, he says to the guys, so what do you think about the hot bucket? Guys, last night I was watching this documentary about rats, and apparently they can chew through steel. So I'm going to try a thing tonight. Just try to go with it. It's weird, but he's on he's on wiki how with it like it's weird but he's on wiki how on his

phone like yeah it says you put the bucket on top of the wrap first and then you heat it up it says here to wear like an oven mitt with your hand that's adhering the bucket to the man's belly or else your hand is going to burn from the hot you can feel like you can feel in the room when you're doing it that everyone else is weirded out you know and you get back in the room when you're doing it that everyone else has weirded out, you know? And you get back in the car and everyone wants to say something like, don't talk. That's great. This is what it means to keep your thumb on everyone.

When you are at this point in the underbelly of criminal enterprise in Miami for goodness sake, you need to keep anyone on their fucking toes. They do not know what to expect. You are constantly sake. You need to keep anyone on their fucking toes because they do not know what to expect. You are constantly on the fly having to come up

with the most creative creature-filled endeavors to keep everyone guessing. And this way, I mean, it explains Eva Mendes' facial expression perfectly because she's like, what the fuck is this? It makes it significantly less intimidating that this tactic requires, like, eight willing participants to execute. It's not like he has some sort of psychic powers. Hey, Tyrese, come over here and hold down his feet.

Hold his feet, please. Even Mendez, you're on mouth duty. Paul Walker, left hand. I'll be on bucket. Not to mention a pet store. Someone had to go and source that rat. Like, that's the funny you're just getting the one large rat today uh we do need to ask them is just standard store policy

you're not gonna put this under a bucket and heat it up a lot so it digs through a cop's dummy right okay just checking we've gotten in trouble for that before oh man i just i just think when they got back in the car one of the henchmen was like so do you think we should like kidnap their like wife or like one of the kids just for some kind of like leverage no what no no i put the rat yeah he's not gonna also like so he betrays him and then he begrudgingly has to he's like he's embarrassed by the rat thing he's like it wasn't my finest but he's a fucking top level criminal so he has to go and find the wife and kids and he doesn't like he's like, it wasn't my finest, but he's a fucking top level criminal so he has to go and find the wife and kids and he doesn't like,

he's like, this is a bad one. This doesn't work. And he's sort of just getting... The bucket's too big for the kid's belly. There's like rim on the side

of the racket. God damn it. Do we have a child-sized metal bucket? You say something and it's binding. Like a big ball would work. I want something,

it's not as small as a thin ball, but it's not as big as a bucket and it's got to be made of who's got what is this a mixing like a pail a pail that's what it would work they may have a pail because someone go past the kfc i don't think that's gonna work this isn't gonna work it's gonna melt that's the hard thing that no one talks about being like the head honcho of a criminal organization is you come up with these elaborate ways of sort of getting what you want and not all of them stick. But in the moment, sometimes you're like, and I'm going to do this to everyone you know. And then you have to, you know, and you don't believe in it and you have to go through with

it. And that's hard. I'm going to do this to everyone you know. Sorry, with the same rat? The same rat? No, the rat will be very full after this. The rat will need a couple of weeks before he'll be ready to party again. There will definitely be a reset time.

Either we'll have multiple rats or we'll spread it out over several days. You know, Tony, he just uses a gator. No, I'm not doing a gator. I told you, I'm not doing a gator. Everybody does a gator. Gator's done. Gator's played out. You know what no one's thinking about in Miami?

A rat bucket. Yeah. Have you ever thought about using a skink, boss? I'm not using a skink. It's a rat. Come on. Can we all just take it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's keep going. They crash a car into a boat. That's it. They drive the money.

No, there's more because Eva Mendez is in Paul Walker's bed. I think she just spent the night because she was freaked out. No, she didn't. She's so wet. She showed up. She swam there. She swam there there which it's only kind of okay you're giving me nothing like griffin do you think that she swam to paul walker's boat uh i don't know how else she got there she shows up like in clothes and wet and she's like hey he's gonna kill you yeah yeah don't get don't do that but like but there's no reference to the fact she swam it's kind of weird and she's not even pumped she's like no she's just like i'm

hey i'm wet and these guys are gonna shoot you well they can't show every moment of every character's day guys sometimes a character just shows up into a scene and they're covered in spaghetti sauce and you just have to trust that they had some sort of spaghetti accident off screen yeah so then yes they're like what are we context clues yeah they're like what are we gonna do they're gonna kill us not if we steal their money which i don't fully grasp now they'll super kill you then yeah and so then then ludicrous mobilizes everyone with a car in Miami. Good old-fashioned scramble. He says, hey, if you have a car, please come to this thing and hang out during this day in a closed warehouse in Miami heat

in the middle of summer with all the windows and doors closed until they might get here chased by cops. Have you ever seen a clown car, you know, used to its full comedic exploit where there's just dude after dude

after dude walking out of that VW Beetle, it is the boy racer equivalent of that visually and it is stunning to me.

Yeah, I loved it so much. All the cops are coming to one location and so they just, as you say, Trav, they mobilize the car lot. 600 people who have souped up WRXs,

every stripe of car you can think of, and they just fucking go. And everyone's on the same side. Guy who couldn't pay rent from the first race. Misogynistic dude from the first race. Everybody else. And do you know what? If it's confusing for you, don't worry. Because one of the guys who comes back in his car,

there's a close-up of him, and he says, it's a good old-fashioned scramble. Yeah. And you think, that's exactly what this is. It's a scramble. Bilkins was so charmed. The guy from the FBI went out, and he was like, oh. These fucking scams. These boys.

You got me, boys. Is he the worst and most irresponsible government agent in the history of government agencies? As soon as he came on screen, I just immediately thought it was Cal Winslow. So there was just a piece of my childhood that it warmed my heart to see him. If only. That would have been so dope. Instead, we get this guy who's just like, yeah, that's a big illegal street race. That's 600 illegal cars driving illegally.

God bless him. God bless these scamps i want to judge reinhold to pop up in the scramble and just be like and so then they're like okay let's go to the airstrip oh sorry he fires one guy out after hey we're all having a good time we're all friends now no fucking reason ejector seat just check it Right into the Florida Evergreen. That was rude. That was rude. That was uncalled for. And- Flames his head into the dashboard first.

It was a heel turn. Which I was like, wait, hold on. Yeah. Why do you, why do you need to beat, you're about to eject him out the door. Why did you beat him first?

You're concussing him to the point where he'll probably drown now. I mean, you're putting him in the water, which means he won't die because he's not hitting pavement, presumably, but you've incapacitated him. So now he's probably going to drown in this

in this lake sucks what you're doing sucks man can we talk about same in the same realm as rat bucket torture varone uh instead of taking a plane maybe the best way to escape a place has opted instead oh switch up it's a boat a much less effective way to get away from a place he was testing um eva mendez though yes yeah and why not tell her boat and take plane plane better than boat okay you wanted to get it okay go on which is tough to argue with griff you go ahead we leapfrogged over ejecto cito cuz just really fast it's there's some there's there's some really terrific stuff happening in that scene where he says this car can do some cool stuff do you want to see he bludgeons the man's head against the dashboard many times

and then he picks up a button after bashing the man's head in you would think the man would have some self-preservation instinct to be like hey uh that hurt what you just did to my face and head hurt a lot what are you what are you doing with that button um but then he pressed it and the door flies off and then the seat ejects and then he says ejecto cito cuz i don't know why he says that and then he says oh griffin i think it's uh racism okay i think he's making fun of his Spanish accent. It's almost as wild as the next thing he says, which was, it worked, and then, I love this button. Yeah. He was surprised that it worked, which we didn't see the ejector seat being installed,

did we? Well, no, but didn't they? We heard reference to it. It's a repurposing of the NOS, I think, is the thing of that, is that they've found another way to use NOS, which is the mechanic. He asked Paul Walker if he has any half-empty NOS containers. think, is the thing of that, is that they've found another way to use NOS, which is the mechanic. Walker says you have any half-empty NOS containers.

That's what it was. In case we need to drop passages. But it's, I love this button. This button? Sometimes when I press this button. They cut out a storyline, Griffin, where up till then, Tyrese had refused to use any buttons. Right.

They'd be like push that button he's like no i have a bad history of buttons i don't trust buttons when this is him learning to love again when you frame it this way it makes sense actually because sometimes when you press that button it makes the car go fucking super fast and sometimes it makes a man fly out of the side of the car that button is actually one of the better buttons i think great button and then he loudly says over the then he loudly says over the radio, he loudly says over the radio, which isn't just an earpiece, it's just a radio that the other passenger can hear,

go ahead and blow it, right? At which point the other passenger in Paul Walker's car should be like, hey, what the fuck is he talking about? Where's my friend? Why did he say it worked? It appears that Paul Walker's the only one receiving the audio on that walkie-talkie, even though it's very much just out. Yeah.

Yeah. It's time. So then they show up, and he knows Eva Mendez betrayed him. Paul Walker gets there because Tyrese doesn't know that they changed location, at which point Carter Verone opts to not kill anyone right away. No. That would be too efficient. Instead, we're going to delay all that.

He says, drive the car so they get back in the car, which we all know is any one of the driver's seat of power. For some reason, they said, let's get to where you have home court advantage, a car where you, Paul Walker, are most comfortable. We're going to drive 30 feet that way, then I'm going gonna kill you i think i just realized there's a plausible reason inside of the way the plot is constructed for why he

might not kill people immediately which is he thinks that the rat in the bucket thing is close but the only people who have worked on it you know he needs to keep them alive in case they've got any ideas. Before I kill you, it seems like you really had that screaming situation on lockdown, and I'm wondering if you could share some of your best practices. What should we do? Any notes on how that whole thing unfolded? Because I just got the feeling in the room that some of you

were unsure. And the other guys, they were honest with me. We're moving in the right direction i just have to know two rats was it scary was it you seemed upset but not scared you seem disgusted and i get that is that when we grew apart is that what happened did our love die with that rat bucket thing i just think baby i i think there's a you know if you look hard enough there's a reason for everything that happens in this film and and guys it's uh it's it's that kind of energy that i want to bring into our shining light segment where we've talked a lot of guff about this film but it's a lot of good stuff too well it's true but it's time for us to each individually put a

highlighter under our most favorite part of this film would you like to go yeah it was a comedy line i have grown to love uh tyrese's performance as roman through the franchise he's he's elicited probably the most laughs of any character and in this one it's um he's stalling because eva mendes has to hide uh in the in the boat and so he's outside he's talking to the two henchmen he's got his like arm up and he's just talking trash about he's like how much money do you guys get paid you get paid well for this you got those silk shoes so i tell you he points at one of them he's like if i was getting money i get that mole taken off my face and that's a real thing that that real person playing that character has

absolutely there was him riffing on an actor not a character god it made me laugh though i was like you really just say whatever you want shining light a really just a bit of bullying that's in the film yeah oh okay can i do mine oh no sorry you go travis i loved so when they go to get roman when they go to recruit roman paul walk go to recruit Roman, Paul Walker turns to Bilkins. He's like, hey, whatever happens, just let it go or whatever. He's like, oh, yeah, I don't care. So then Roman and Paul Walker start fighting.

And it's the most like 10 year old boy schoolyard hustle I've ever seen. And Paul Walker says twice, you're still shit at fighting. It's so good. I love that too. Yeah, it's so nice nice i expected him to give him a wet willy i quite i always like it when that happens in movies because in film it's always like dudes fighting each other is always depicted like a boxing match but if you see real life fighting or if you've ever been involved in like an actual fight with someone it looks horrible it's just it's just it's just grappling and wrestling and like breathing so it's nice to see some uh realistic you know also i think that's what sets off their chemistry

for me for the rest of the movie is i'm like these that's what makes them feel like truly old friends it's like that insanely familiar fight. You still can't fight for shit. Sets up the world. Can I do a second little one too? Because I had another little one. Just a little one. When Paul Walker's fighting the passenger in the car at the end of the movie,

the other Henshin, Henshin bites him. Paul Walker screams in such a real way. Such a legitimate, like Paul Walker, not the the character the actor is surprised he's being bit well he bites him like on the collarbone which is a weird place to bite a person i feel like i like seeing a bite like that that feels like how i would try and get out of a situation you know like you're just using whatever you have yeah desperation isn't that i had to check Like a rat in a bucket. You'll do what you gotta do. Oh my god, it was thematic, Griffin. You're right.

I had to check my notes for my one because it's right at the beginning of the film, which is gone from my memory. It has been expunged. But it's been there at the impound lot. We've talked enough about this, but for some reason, there are henchmen in this movie that are from Grease lightning um which are there throughout the film and it is referenced in

the movie like they keep roman keeps referring to one of them as the fawns and like even at one point they sit on it like they use catchphrases from happy days which is just great to see there is a very heavy situation where they're at the impound lot they've all been i think that's the bit where they're tasked with getting to the ferrari to get the cigar out and it's a very heavy situation where they're at the impound lot. They've all been, I think that's the bit where they're tasked with getting to the Ferrari to get the cigar out, and it's a race to see who can get there first, who will be selected by the supervillain to be like their boy for this mission going forward. To drive his money from one part of Florida to another.

That's right. They're very important. Not just anyone can do that. So Paul Walker and Tyrese get their first. They've done it. High fives all around. Arse slapping. We're great.

We're golden. And then the 1950s Grease Lightning villains come, and things are getting a little bit tense. And then the cops come. And now, I mean, shit has hit the fan massively. They've broken into an in-pound lot. We've got villains on one side of us. We've got cops on the other.

Here I am. Stuck in the middle with you. And the guy who's playing Fonzie just goes, time to go. And it's just how he says it. Like he's getting dry cleaning. Time to go.

And just gets in his car and drives off. I thought for sure you were going to mention the thing that is wild about that scene is without missing a beat, Tyrese just pulls a gun out and starts shooting at the cops.

That ruled too. That's a huge escalation of the situation. And then later Paul Walker, when the cop was like you fired, I'm a federal officer. Paul Walker was like, if Roman wanted to kill you, he would have. Yeah. What? I liked that. I liked that. And my little

nibble shining light um my little dessert shining light was that there's a lot of pepsi uh in this movie and i'm a pepsi guy so it's always my uh my shining light is largely beverage based uh it's the scene right after paul walker is arrested uh and he is being told about this mission this undercover mission he is about to have to go on and he is partnered up with with just this IT nerd polo shirt wearing geek who is drinking a big gulp that says Gallo's Pizza on it. And Paul Walker looks at the cup and says,

tell me what would make a better motor for my skyline, a Gallo 12 or a Gallo 24? And the guy looks nervous, side eye at his friend. And then he looks over, he's like, 24? And then Paul Walker just smirks and he's like i didn't know pizza places made and that guy looks down at his cup and they try to like have a little kaiser soze moment but like a but a pretty bad one but the look on this man's face where he

realizes he's been bamboozled by paul walker and now he's not gonna get to be his friend he's realized he's he had a chance to be friends with Paul Walker and go on a car adventure with him, but he fucked it up so spectacularly. Does he not know where he got his fucking dinner from? There's a massive bit of graphic design on the front of the Big Gulp that says gallows. It's just, in this situation, he had to know that Paul Walker didn't want to be his partner, and so this was not a straight up and down question he was giving him statistically the odds were much better he could

have been like those neither of those are car things and paul walker would have been like you made that up the trajectory of that man's life is totally different after that point he's in seven more fast than furious films but he fucked up this one impossible test that paul walker set for him you can even talk so. I didn't know pizza places made motors. His cop dad, who he answers to, is equally so disappointed in his boy.

He does the thing that they always do where they pull the cup out of his hand, and I wanted the young cop to be like, hey man, I already just lost the, why did you take my soda? You don't think I'm upset enough? I don't want you to be like hey man i already just lost the why did you take my soda like you don't think i'm upset enough i don't i told you not to bring names in here because people will see them and then use them to trick you with puzzles you're right all right i want to get a rating um to end this episode uh i'm i'm torn on the scale i think it's going to be one out of 11

because that's how many fast and furious movies have been released to cinema so far griffin what would you give this movie too fast too furious oh my god you know what uh pretty low my dudes pretty low didn't have a great time with it i'm gonna say probably uh four is the worst in my book i think uh i think this is probably like the third or fourth worst of them wow i really wait are we ranking against the other ones that makes more sense i don't know how i'm saving for myself i'm saving my ranking for the final one so that i can make an informed decision okay So you can either just give a score out of 11 or you can give it your personal ranking. A four out of 11.

Okay, I will say out of 11, right? Because I haven't seen 9, 10, or 11 yet. So I don't want to rank them again. I also haven't seen three. But I will say that this movie, watching it, made me like, I should go back and watch all of them and catch up on the ones. So I think that alone pushes it into like a 7 out of 11 for me because i'm not saying like this is the best

fast and furious movie but it is good enough that i'm like i would like to keep watching the fast and furious series again i'm back in it i think i mean this i enjoyed i enjoyed that the heck out of this i give it 8 out of 11, I think. I'm still aware that it's not a high watermark for cinema, but I just thought, this is what I want to watch. This is basically, if I go to the movies, that is an approximation of the experience I want to have. Dude, I am 100% with you,

and I refuse to intellectualize my feeling. I'm shooting from the hip. My brain's turned to mush, and I do not care. It's 9 out of 11. It's lovely. I loved this movie. I had a from the hip. My brain's turned to mush and I do not care. It's 9 out of 11. I loved this movie. I had a lot of fun. And I think actually a lot of the tone of this movie was informed by 9 out of 11. A lot of things changed on 9 out of 11.

A lot of things changed. You guys don't know. You weren't here. It got pretty fucking heavy actually. Freedom isn't free, guys. You guys don't even know. It got pretty heavy here. We needed to watch't free, guys. You guys don't even know. It got pretty heavy here. We needed to watch Paul Walker drive and have fun with Tyrese sometimes.

I feel comfortable sometimes making tiny little comedic references to that. Outside of when I'm talking to the Americans, I won't do it on the episode while I have the Americans on with me. Thank you, guys. As an American and a diplomat in many ways, I give you free reign. Make whatever 9-11 jokes you want. All you need to know is our calendar system means it's 11-9.

Oh, that's actually better. Yeah, that doesn't even mean anything. That calendar system makes a lot of sense. November 9th was pretty shitty for us, too. We don't talk a lot about November 9th. Before we go, I have a question for you boys. Have you thought about doing any bonus episodes with like Hobbs and Shaw We've done it

So it hasn't been released on the free feed But you can see it on the sub stack We did it as a live show in Melbourne Good fun movie We saw it at 4DX What with this crumpet and tea drinking Some bitch Why it's such good bonus content

For those getting our premium stuff is because I set up all the cameras and stuff myself and I managed to cut our heads out. That's right. So the video that people get access to is just Guy and my torso and some heads from the crowd

while we discuss Hobbs and Shaw for now. It's one of the greatest locked off shots you'll see in your fucking life. Well, I got to ejecto-cito, buds. Got to go get dinner ready for the kids. Absolutely. Well, we'll see you guys hopefully before, but most likely sometime around Thanksgiving 2024.

Go well. God bless. And we'll see everybody else at the live show, either in person if you're in Auckland December 15th, or live streaming via our sub stack. All the details at worstideaofalltime.com. Travis and Griff, thank you so much. Thank you.

Quick plugs for your stuff. Go to macroid.family. There you go. Figure it out. When does this go up? Does this go up this calendar month? Yes. Oh, okay.

We got our Candle Nights show coming up. It's our annual holiday fundraiser. If you go to bit.ly slash candlelights 2023, you can get a ticket and all proceeds go to an organization in Huntington called Harmony House that does really good work. And it's a lot of fun. Gets you in the holiday spirit. Hey.

Beautiful. Happy holidays, everybody. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1