FILM REVIEW ONLY

I enjoyed the first movie in this series "The Fast and the Furious" (2001) and hated the sequel "2 Fast 2 Furious" (2003) so wasn't too sure what to expect from the third helping "Fast and Furious - Tokyo Drift" released in 2006.

The action moves from the USA to Tokyo (the clue's in the title) and there's a new main man in the form of actor Lucas Black, with no Vin Diesel (first movie) or Paul Walker (first two movies) in sight.

Black plays Sean Boswell, a young American who is sent to Japan to live with his expatriate father as an alternative to going to prison for racing a fellow speed freak around a half-completed housing site to win the hand of a fair lady, and causing complete mayhem and thousands of dollars worth of damage in the process. (It's an excellent action scene)

He moves in with his pop in a rundown suburban area of Tokyo and is enrolled in the local school where he befriends a local Japanese American called Twinkie (Bow Wow) who (of course) just happens to be into the local street and drift racing scene. Unfortunately, he almost immediately makes a hated enemy of the local street racing champ in the form of DK (Brian Tee) whose uncle just happens to be a high-ranking Japanese mob boss. That he immediately takes a shine to DK's girlfriend Neela (Nathalie Kelley) doesn't help to improve relations!

And so the racing begins, with exotic speed machines and even more exotic looking young ladies aplenty, with drag races around multi-story car parks and the Tokyo streets and highways. Where all these high school kids get the vast amounts of cash required to buy all these expensive motors is nigh on inexplicable, and I can't imagine the Japanese police looked too favourably at the ease with which the boy (and girl) racers used their streets as illegal raceways! But it certainly makes for very highly entertaining cinema, especially if you are into fast cars and testosterone packed action sequences.

The soundtrack, with rock music thumping away in the background, is excellent, and lends itself very well to the action on the screen. The movie is also helped by a decent storyline, although the ending is somewhat predictable, and the dialogue between Sean and his father will make you cringe and is nothing short of woeful.

In my opinion this is actually the best of the first three movies in the series, and a fun film to watch.

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Director: Justin Lin

Starring: Lucas Black, Bow Wow, Brian Tee, Sung Kang, Nathalie Kelly and Zachary Ty Bryan.

Duration: 104 minutes
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