The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Tags

Action, Sports

There’s one thing that surpasses
Every culture, race, and creed,
A deep, unsleeping hunger
Men across the globe must feed,
A simple, primal craving
That I’ve yet to see suppressed:
The ever-fervent appetite
To prove themselves the best.

It’s not at all a shock that
Wars and races share a cause,
For when a challenge beckons,
We put common sense on pause.
The winners plan their parties,
And the losers future wins.
I guess that competition’s
Not the worst of mankind’s sins.
______________

MPA rating:  PG-13

Boy, you never realize how little time you have until college courses take it from you. My apologies for being absent lately, but it’s time to return to the Fast and Furious series. Tokyo Drift feels like the black sheep of the franchise. The lack of any characters from the previous two films (mostly) is evidence that the filmmakers were willing to just experiment with story lines as long as they still revolved around the testosterone-fueled art of street racing. It simultaneously fits in with this franchise by emulating its predecessors while also having every right to just be a separate movie with no connection at all.

Tokyo Drift could conceivably even work as some kind of origin story for Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, showing how he became such a good driver, but no, it’s instead the origin of one Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), a rather dull teenage Walker wannabe with a Southern accent. Prone to vehicular recklessness and the inevitable trouble that follows, Sean’s only option other than juvie is to move in with his Navy dad in Tokyo, but even there he can’t stay away from the thrill of racing for long. In a way, his transfer-student introduction to his high school is like a live-action anime at first, but soon the plot shifts to borrowing heavily from The Karate Kid: Part II, with the plucky foreigner butting heads with a Japanese hotshot (Brian Tee) over a girl (Nathalie Kelley) and being trained by an experienced master (Sung Kang) to challenge his rival.

Now three films in, I’ve gotten a grasp on what I like and don’t like about these movies, and both are integral to them so far. I love the car races and chases. Who doesn’t love a good car chase? In the spirit of the classic Initial D anime, Tokyo Drift is all about drifting (the horizontal swing of a car rounding tight corners that is clearly harder than it looks) and it makes good use of the concept, from a unique race through the levels of a crowded parking garage to a climactic set piece down a winding mountain road. What I don’t like is the requisite pre-race party scenes full of macho attitudes and scantily-dressed women, which is a little more concerning here since several of the characters are high-schoolers. I don’t know how close this atmosphere is to actual street racing culture, but I have even less interest in said culture if it’s accurate.

Tokyo Drift doesn’t reinvent the friction-worn wheel, but it’s an entertaining car-centric flick, whether as part of the Fast and Furious world or not. Sung Kang as the cool, mentoring Han is easily the best new character, though I’m not sure if we’ll get to see any of these characters again after things swing back to Walker-Diesel-land in the next movie. It may not do much to serve the franchise, but Tokyo Drift is a watchable slice of East-meets-West automotive action.

Best line: (Sean) “Why’d you let me race your car? You knew I was gonna wreck it.”
(Han) “Why not?”
(Sean) “’Cause that’s a lot of money.”
(Han) “I have money, it’s trust and character I need around me. You know, who you choose to be around you lets you know who you are. One car in exchange for knowing what a man’s made of? That’s a price I can live with.”

 

Rank:  List Runner-Up

 

© 2020 S.G. Liput
699 Followers and Counting

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Tags

Action, Sports, Thriller

They say it’s not bragging if it’s proven true,
So if I said I could drive faster than you,
It’s not arrogance or a source of disgust
If I can then leave you chagrined in my dust.

I’ll eat my own words if my pomp is disproved,
But I’ve yet to leave an opponent unmoved.
So what do you say? Let our wheels choose between
A legitimate boast or a punk who can preen.
___________________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

On to the second film in the nitro-powered franchise, cleverly utilizing its sequel number in its own title. That’s right, 2 Fast 2 Furious. Considering how synonymous Vin Diesel/Dom Toretto is with this series, I was surprised that he wasn’t in the sequel, which instead featured Paul Walker as the star, in buddy cop mode opposite Tyrese Gibson. Better in several ways than its predecessor, it’s a film confident in its own undemanding entertainment value.

The film starts very much like the first, with Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner being called in for a four-way street race, but this time the cars have such bright neon colors that you can’t tell what’s real and what’s CGI, which isn’t a positive in this case. After letting Toretto go in the previous film, O’Conner is on the run, but he’s given a chance at redemption when law enforcement recruits him to infiltrate the organization of a Miami drug lord who needs fast drivers. To do that, he seeks out an old friend named Roman Pearce (Gibson) who, despite harboring resentment against Brian’s police past, joins him as a lean, mean street-racing duo.

2 Fast 2 Furious is summer movie entertainment, full of vehicular stunts that remain just believable enough to make viewers think they could jump a moveable bridge too. (Please don’t.) Without the constant parallels to Point Break, this one feels more sure of itself than its predecessor did, and Walker and Gibson have great tough guy chemistry that grows with time. The dialogue about their past friendship even sheds a little light on O’Conner’s actions at the end of the first movie, which make a little more sense now. Even so, it’s too bad Diesel was too busy filming The Chronicles of Riddick to reprise his role, but his Pitch Black costar Cole Hauser makes an unpredictably ruthless bad guy as the Argentinian drug lord drunk on power.

With high-speed thrills and more downshifting than you can shake a stick shift at, I’d consider 2 Fast 2 Furious a better film than the first, and the lower your expectations are, the better it seems. It’s a good action movie but, amidst that overcrowded genre, there’s nothing remarkable that would warrant a multi-film franchise. Yet if this movie can improve on its predecessor, I’m still curious to see what the films that follow can bring to the table.

Best line: (Brian) “You ready for this?”   (Roman) “Come on, man. Guns, murderers and crooked cops? I was made for this, bro.”

 

Rank:  List Runner-Up

 

© 2020 S.G. Liput
697 Followers and Counting

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

Tags

Action, Sports, Thriller

The Fast and the Furious,
If you were curious,
Knows what it is, and at that, it is good:
Cars going fast
And a masculine cast.
I’m curious what else is under the hood.
____________________

MPA rating: PG-13

Periodically, I like to delve into a series that I’ve unconsciously avoided until now, and I’ve largely enjoyed past explorations of franchises like Mission: Impossible or the Riddick trilogy. So then it’s finally time to investigate the Fast and Furious movies, a series that has surprisingly risen from “that little series about car racing” to a huge blockbuster phenomenon. I’m wondering what the hubbub is about, so I’ll be watching all nine films in the franchise to see just what has made it so wildly popular.

So what of the very first movie from 2001, the one with the “the”s in its title? Is it the kind of innovative kickoff film that promised big things ahead? Um, no, I would not go that far. The Fast and the Furious is a right decent action movie, in which undercover cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) infiltrates LA’s illegal street racing scene and the crew of racer Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), who might be behind a rash of recent high-speed robberies. I can’t fault Walker and Diesel, the former full of cautious self-confidence and the latter boasting an intense glare to match his skills behind the wheel.

The problem is that The Fast and the Furious follows the exact formula of Point Break, just substituting driving for surfing and comes up short in most respects. And by the open-ended conclusion, the attempts at character development just don’t quite justify Brian’s sympathy for Toretto, making the cop’s actions a bit puzzling. Plus, I just have very little interest in cars that go vroom, so I’m sure I’m not the target audience for this kind of movie. Even so, do feminists not have a problem with how women are portrayed here? It was nice to see Michelle Rodriguez (Lost alert!) as Dom’s girlfriend Letty, who gets a few moments to be cool, but women here are mostly little more than trophies and hood ornaments for the swaggering male drivers, which was a turnoff for me and my VC (my Viewing Companion, who happens to be female), though it plays into the comparison to exploitation films that other reviews have made.

The high-speed chases are entertaining and I’ll keep watching, but right now, it’s hard to imagine a decades-spanning franchise based on this film alone. I understand that the scope of the series changes around the fifth movie, so I’m curious to see what that looks like. Stay tuned.

Best line: (Dom) “Ask any racer. Any real racer. It don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning’s winning.”

 

Rank:  Honorable Mention

 

© 2020 S.G. Liput
697 Followers and Counting