the fast and the furious: tokyo drift

[toastykitten]

I watched the first one for Vin Diesel. Didn't watch the second one.

But he dies! Damn you Justin Lin why did you have to kill him off?

Anyway, this is a thoroughly preposterous movie, even more so than the first one.  The lead character, Shawn, has the worst Southern accent ever, and the "girl" an even worse Australian one. And she's nothing but a girl. At least in the first one Michelle Rodriguez had something to do. Supposedly Sung Kang was slated to play the lead instead of the white guy, and I kind of wish he had, because Sung Kang can actually act. But whatever, the movie's not about acting; it's about cars and drifting. The plot (what little of it there is) is stolen from the anime Initial D, which has terrible animation, but fairly good CG on their races. The races are pretty spectacular, and some of the shots are actually pretty original.

• When is Justin Lin going to direct a movie with decent female characters in it? I am not asking for much, just for "the girl" to have a personality.
• The oldest kid from Home Improvement has a small role in the beginning.
• Oh, and per Ebert's complaint, why don't the boy and girl kiss?
• For all Lin's talk about making the script "less stereotypical and racist", the movie is still pretty cliche-laden and the script should have gone through another re-write.
• On the other hand, car chase scenes are pretty action-packed, and I was actually surprised in a few places. There were some mistakes that all car movie makes, like showing shots of people upshifting for more power. And the obligatory Nos shot.
• Vin Diesel shows up at the end! Best 30 seconds of the movie, hands-down.

Jeff Yang writes about Justin Lin's experience making the movie.
Roger Ebert's review of this last movie.

Anyway, conclusion: dumbass movie, fun car scenes.