You Probably Haven’t Even Seen One of the Best Fast & Furious Movies

One of the best movies in the Fast & Furious franchise is also one of the hardest to track down for a re-watch. Los Bandoleros is a 20-minute short film set between Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious (2009), and it never even got a theatrical release. The short was included on the special edition Blu-ray release of the fourth movie (Fast & Furious), and even today, it hasn’t been officially released on any streaming services, including PVOD stores for rental or purchase. Hopefully, that won’t be the case for the franchise’s next short film, which Vin Diesel recently announced. Read on for a bit about this obscure masterpiece, and why it’s worth tracking down for your next Fast Saga binge-watch.

It’s hard to imagine the Fast and Furious franchise without Diesel these days, but back in 2009, he was actually pretty far removed from the story. His character Dom Toretto went on the run at the end of the first movie, was mentioned in passing in the second movie, and made only a post-credit cameo appearance in the third movie (though chronologically, Tokyo Drift takes place later in the story.) Diesel reportedly turned down these two sequels, saying he didn’t care for the scripts and he had other projects to prioritize.

Tokyo Drift was a critical and commercial flop in its time, but so were many of the projects Diesel was working on. Universal and director Justin Lin persuaded Diesel to come back to the series, and he in turn persuaded his co-stars, apparently telling Paul Walker that this would be the first “true sequel” to their original movie together.

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Other changes were made to reinvigorate the franchise as well, including a shift in focus away from racing and car subcultures in general. To get there, the series needed to wrangle its disparate story elements and characters, quickly establishing what would be cast away and what would be kept in the canon. If you feel like the story didn’t really accomplish that, then Los Bandoleros may be just the missing link you’re looking for.

The Story

Remember that at this point, the last we saw Dom, he was a wanted man making a run for Mexico. When Fast & Furious picks up, he is part of an expert criminal crew working in the Dominican Republic, but the ground is shrinking beneath them as law enforcement closes in. Los Bandoleros fills in the gap, depicting his time as an expert thief in the intervening years.

The short film finds Dom having lived in the Dominican Republic as a fugitive for five years, and looking for another score to support himself. He recruits Han Lue (Sung Kang) and Rico Santos (Don Omar) to help him break his associate Tego Leo (Tego Calderón) out of prison. That done, they meet up with a local politician named Elvis (Juan Fernandez) who plans to aid them in hijacking a fuel tanker.

Their meeting takes place at a nightclub, and it seems to be going well when Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) shows up unexpectedly. Apparently, she has been trying to track down Dom since the events of The Fast and the Furious. The two take a drive together and rekindle their romance. This leads pretty seamlessly into the opening of Fast & Furious, where Dom disbands the crew and distances himself from Letty for her own protection, fearing that the police will find them soon.

Missing Links

Perhaps the most important part of the story that can only be found in Los Bandoleros is the introduction of Rico and Tego. The Spanish-speaking duo are featured heavily in Fast & Furious and Fast Five, and are counted among the crew and the family that is so central to the saga. Without the background of the short film, these two seem to come out of nowhere, and it’s frustrating that their introduction was hidden away in a Blu-ray extra you couldn’t possibly have seen before the main film.

Similarly, the short establishes the friendship between Dom and Han, which is presumed in the other movies, but actually feels quite nice to have fleshed out here in more detail. Meanwhile, it’s nice to see the central romance of Dom and Letty get some development just before things go wrong for them on the big screen.

Behind the scenes, Los Bandoleros is an important turning point for Diesel’s creative control and investment in this series; he often emphasizes his role as a producer on this series, rather than just a star, and it seems like his personal pride in the project started here. Diesel directed Los Bandoleros, and in the process, really took ownership of the story.

Now, Diesel is directing another short which he says is a “precursor” to the upcoming finale of the Fast Saga, just as Los Bandoleros was a precursor to Fast & Furious. It’s not clear what questions this short might answer, but hopefully it will be released and distributed in a more convenient way than its predecessor.

At the time of this writing, the only official way to watch Los Bandoleros is on one of the Blu-ray releases that include it. The short film has never been added to a streaming service, making it easy to miss on a series binge-watch. With Diesel reminding fans of it this week, hopefully more will find their way to this hidden gem. The sequel to Fast X is currently scheduled to hit theaters in March of 2026.