25.6.06

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Tokyo Drift is as good as The Fast And The Furious, and way better than 2 Fast, 2 Furious.

Lucas Black stars as Shawn, an American teen shipped off to live with his father in Japan after causing one bit of trouble too many whilst street racing. Of course, the country that developed "drifting" is the ideal place to send a hothead like that. It takes Shawn all of thirty seconds to fall in with the drift racing crowd, thirty-five seconds to identify the nephew-of-a-Yakuza whom he absolutely must not piss off, and about fifty seconds to actually piss him off.

Cue some cool racing scenes, much drifting, much crashing, and plot that's there somewhere.

The movie is like the first. If you're expecting deep, meaningful dialogue and heart-wrenching character interaction, go see something else. This is pure, balls-out, testosterone-fueled mayhem.

The movie, like the first, seems set up to prove that Yank cars are better than Jap cars. This time we take a race-tuned engine - I'm reliably informed that it was a RB26DETT Nissan Skyline GTR engine, which means that it's used to carting around about 3 1/2 ounces of fibreglass bodywork and a tiny driver - and shoe-horn it into a '67 Ford Mustang body and chassis. Apparently, changing the suspension and tires means that this combo is faster than anything else on the road.

Still, willing suspension of disbelief and all that. The same suspension of disbelief is needed when a similar 3 1/2 ounces of fibreglass body rams the 'Stang repeatedly and both cars get damaged! (as opposed to the 'Stang ripping through the other car like a monkey on a cupcake).

If you can submerge that side of your personality, it's a great movie.

And watch out for the World's Greatest Cameo at the end.

Doombreed rating: ****1/2

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