The Fast and the Furious is a 2001 action film directed by Rob Cohen from a screenplay by Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist, and David Ayer, based on the Vibe magazine article "Racer X" by Ken Li. The first installment in the Fast & Furious franchise, it stars Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Rick Yune, Chad Lindberg, Johnny Strong, and Ted Levine. In the film, Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is a Los Angeles street racer suspected of masterminding a series of big-rig hijackings. When undercover cop Brian O'Conner (Walker) infiltrates Toretto's iconoclatsic crew, he falls for Toretto's sister (Brewster) and must choose a side: the gang or the LAPD.

Robert Alan Cohen is an American director and producer of film and television. Beginning his career as an executive producer at 20th Century Fox, Cohen produced and developed numerous high-profile film and television programs, including The Wiz, The Witches of Eastwick, and Light of Day until he began focusing on full-time directing in the 1990s. He directed the action films The Fast and the Furious, and XXX.