The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift tries
to allow the ever-popular franchise of which it belongs
to transcend the territory of mere cutthroat races and
scantily-dressed women, but in doing so it defeats its
own purpose. I liked the first two films in the series
because they were good at being preposterous; the flashy
styles of their respective directors, Rob Cohen and John
Singleton, may not have been inspired, but they made for
two very tight and suspenseful movies about brainless
subjects. This third installment is directed by Justin
Lin, the promising young director of 2003’s Better
Luck Tomorrow, and tampers with the tried-and-true
Fast and Furious formula. The results are utterly
abysmal.
Not only is the star-power of
the lead-actor of the previous installments in the
series, Paul Walker, gone—so is the exciting
street-racing. Lucas Black’s performance as the new
protagonist, Sean Boswell, didn’t bother me, but the
absence of captivating driving sequences did. The film
makes the mistake of exploring the phenomenon of “drift”
racing, in which racers accelerate through courses and
then hit their emergency breaks rapidly when turning to
spin weightlessly. This style makes for totally bland
racing sequences. Whereas the mere adrenaline generated
during such sequences in the more straightforward
previous films was enough to keep viewers interested,
the slow-moving swervy-werviness of the “drifting” of
this film is not.
In addition, The Fast and
the Furious: Tokyo Drift also tries its luck at
actually crafting a plot, which is equally as
unsuccessful as its attempt to take on drift-racing.
It’s hard to fault director Lin for actually trying to
assemble a complete entertainment-experience out of the
project, but it’s equally as difficult to try and make a
case that he does so well. Once the “narrative” takes
Boswell to Japan, where he learns to drift, it laughably
allows him to engage in a subplot in which he is tempted
by a forbidden romance with a rival-driver’s
family-member. I walked into the screening of the movie
that I attended almost certain that it would be as
welcomingly fun as its predecessors, but what I got was
a muddled, un-simple mess of a movie that didn’t
interest me in the least bit. The Fast and the
Furious: Tokyo Drift serves as bland and boring
proof that the third time is most definitely not always
a charm.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews (7.13.2006)