Classic Movie Review: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

I walked into the first The Fast and the Furious movie with the attitude that I was going to suffer through another brainless, bloated action spectacle and... I was right. However, even as I got exactly the bad movie I expected I was somehow won over by the spectacle. Something about those fabulous cars, all of that speed, and those extreme chase scenes overcame my disgust with the acting and the script and made me really like that picture.

The same feeling overtook me as I watched the sequel , 2 Fast 2 Furious recently. And once again, those beautiful cars, that speed, those chases, they brought me nothing but giddy thrills. And somehow, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is dumber and louder than each of the first two films combined and yet again, those cars, that speed and these chases, were faster and more furious than ever and the giddy thrills kept on coming.

Directed by Justin Lin, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift shifts the action to Japan from the gritty streets of L.A and the sun drenched roads of Miami. In Tokyo, we are told, there is a new style of racing that is faster, more dangerous, and more destructive than any other kind of racing on the planet. Into this new underground sport comes a teenager named Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) who is on the run from a jail sentence from a little racing accident back home in California.

Forced by his mother to move in with his army colonel father in Tokyo, Sean takes little time in finding trouble. With the help of the only other American student in his new school, a hustler named Twinkie (Bow Wow), Sean discovers drifting and a new dangerous hobby is born. Taken under the wing of another hustler and former drift racer named Han (Sung Kang), Sean soon has his own drifting car and a mentor to teach him how to do it. He just as quickly finds a rival in a yakuza connected teenager named Takashi or D.K, who is the champion drifter in all of Tokyo. D.K is short for Drift King.

Sean also, just as quickly, finds a love interest, D.K's girlfriend Neela (Nathalie Kelley). No points for guessing that playing Romeo and Juliet with a yakuza boy's girlfriend is not a good idea or that it will lead to much death, destruction and bullets fired. Of course none of this ridiculousness about characters, plot, romance, or whatever, matters in the least. What matters in Tokyo Drift is the cars and they are all sensational.

I realized while watching the third film in this mindless franchise that much of the pleasure I derive from the cars in the F & F movies comes not from engines fueled with nitrous oxide or even how fast the cars can go. It's all about the paintjob. Candy colored speed machines that bounce light so beautifully you can't decide whether to drive the car or simply have it photographed for others to admire.

Check out how the dark orange with gold flecks on Han's car pop under the massive neon structures of Tokyo. Look out for Bow Wow's neon green vehicle which evokes neon so much that the car nearly glows in the dark. Lucas Black's Sean character prefers old school muscle to the modern Japanese machines but even his refurbished '67 Mustang has an absolutely eye-catching paint job.

Of course, I could go on for paragraphs about how the film really doesn't have much of a plot or how the characters are not all that well fleshed out but that would be missing the point of this picture which is all about the cars, the chases, and the crashes. The death defying stunt driving, coordinated by director Justin Lin, rages just shy of chaotic. At times the drifting takes on the appearance of a ballet on four wheels.

The film has three big car chase scenes and each ups the ante on the one before it, culminating in a drift race down a mountain road that is like a roller coaster made of rock. You can feel just how much director Justin Lin and his technical team loved filming this scene with as little special effects and CGI as possible. Drifting is a real form of racing that, when Tokyo Drift was released, was catching on professionally here in the United States. It never amounted to much but it is the only kind of car racing I would pay money to see.

Director Justin Lin disappointed a lot of critics by directing The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift but I love him for it. He brought genuine talent and enthusiasm to a movie that many still consider a throwaway effort in a beloved franchise. At the time it was released however, I was among the few who willingly claimed that Tokyo Drift was the best Fast and Furious movie, there were only three of them at the time. I’ve softened on that opinion over the years but watching it again, I had yet another giddy, stupid, thrill-fest.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is dumb but it is dumb in the most wonderful ways. It has no plot, the acting is barely passable, and there are any number of reflexively problematic elements about it more than a decade later, but I still love it. When Vin Diesel made his cameo at the end of the movie, I popped like the pro wrestling fan I am. I felt like I did when I was a little kid and the Hulkster made his way to the ring. The Fast and the Furious was and is the closest thing to professional wrestling on the big screen. Instead of headlocks and suplexes, we have nox and tires. It’s macho soap opera in the most braindead and super-fun fashion and I love all of these movies.