Movie Review: Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, The
Posted by: Frederick Szczepanski in Media ReviewsCan we say, cliche? Here’s the review of the movie I went to see on Saturday, June 18, 2006. The people who cancelled on us (Cal and me) should be happy with themselves. Glad I didn’t use my free movie pass on this one… or perhaps I should have.
“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”
Daniel Feinberg, a Zap2it movie reviewer, said it best, making his tagline replace mine.
Tagline: “Very little in the movie is furious and given Black’s slow Alabama-accented speech patterns, nothing is fast either.”
About the Film: Sean Boswell, who has always been an outsider. A loner at school, his only connection to the indifferent world around him is through illegal street racing — which has made him particularly unpopular with the local authorities. To avoid jail time, Sean is sent out of the country to live with his uncle in the military, in a cramped apartment in a low-rent section of Tokyo. In the land that gave birth to the majority of modified racers on the road, the simple street race has been replaced by the ultimate pedal-to-the-metal, gravity-defying automotive challenge … drift racing, a deadly combination of brutal speed on heart stopping courses of hairpin turns and switchbacks. For his first unsuccessful foray in drift racing, Shean unknowingly takes on D.K., the “Drift King,” with ties to the Yakuza, the Japanese crime machine. The only way he can pay off the debt of his loss is to venture into the deadly realm of the Tokyo underworld, where the stakes are life and death.[1]
Bottom Line: This was a painful movie for me to watch. If it wasn’t for one stereotypical scene after another, whether in the U.S. or Japan. The cars are impressive, and I mean that while they are parked. The racing scenes in the very beginning and the very end were the only two things were worth watching. Flashy lights were too flashy for me, and that seemed to be what was an attempt to make up for the rest of the movie, or a lack thereof.
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller, Car Racing
Why I Didn’t Enjoy It: If you want to see this movie because you like cars, I suggest you stay at home. The racing scenes are hardly worth watching. Cinematography was horrible. It was as if they had a limited budget to hire anyone that knew what they were doing, or rushed through it because their time in Tokyo was one day overstayed. This movie was long, but the use of its time was disappointing. The middle consisted of the actors trying to piece together a plot that never seemed to come together. All in all, an immense failure appealing to teens who enjoy rap and fast cars, while not having a brain.
[1] From imdb.com Press Release.
 
I had other plans but those were cancelled on this day as well. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t have replaced the memories I had on any day with other ones. I told Jose, and shortly thereafter, was told my spot was taken by someone else and I could not go to Orlando, FL. YESSSSSSSSS! I would have missed you so much, dude!
