The Fast And The Furious Retrospective Series - The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Written In December 2013

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia

After totaling his car in an illegal street race, Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is sent to live with his father, who is stationed as a U.S. Navy officer in Tokyo, Japan, to avoid juvie or even jail. While in school, he befriends Twinkie (Bow Wow), a “military brat” who introduces him to the world of racing in Japan. Though forbidden to drive, he decides to race against Takashi (Brian Tee), the “Drift King” who has ties to the yakuza. He borrows a Nissan Silvia from Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang), now a business partner to Takashi, and loses, totaling the car because of his lack of knowledge of drifting, racing that involves dangerous hairpin turns. To repay his debt for the car he destroyed, Sean must work for Han. Later on, Han becomes friends with Sean and teaches the young racer how to drift. Takashi’s uncle Kamata (Sonny Chiba), a yakuza head, admonishes Takashi for allowing Han to steal from him. Takashi confronts Han, Sean and Neela (Nathalie Kelley), whereupon they flee. During the chase, Han is killed in an accident in his Veilside Mazda RX-7 and Takashi, Sean and his father become involved in an armed standoff which is resolved by Neela agreeing to leave with Takashi. Twinkie provides his saved money to Sean to make up for Han’s stolen money which Sean returns to Kamata. Sean proposes a race against Takashi to determine who must leave Tokyo. Sean and Han’s friends then build a Ford Mustang ‘67, with a Nissan Skyline inline 6 engine, and others spare parts and Sean wins the race. Later, Sean is challenged by an unnamed driver: Dominic Toretto.

So what to say about this movie… Uh…

Yeah that works, but to be fair, let me real quick get my actual thoughts out of the way. From what I’ve heard, fans of this series are not especially fond of this movie. And to a degree, I get why, if it weren’t for Dom’s cameo at the end and Han’s apparent connection to him, this film would be to Fast & Furious what Never Say Never Again is to James Bond. However, it is not a bad movie at all. I liked plenty of things about it, I’ll speak about them right now.

PROS

• This movie has arguably even better action than 2 Fast 2 Furious and FAR better action than The Fast And The Furious.
• Like Ludacris before him, Bow Wow does a pretty good job as an actor for a musician.
• I haven’t seen the main actor in anything before, but he’s really good!
• This Han guy oozes liquid cool!
• The villains in this movie are actually really good.
• This is a movie that takes place in Japan that has only 3 credited white actors and only 1 credited black actor, this is great because the movie takes place in Asia and would logically have a cast of primarily ASIAN actors!
• The Japanese people in this movie SPEAK JAPANESE!!!!
• Vin’s cameo at the end is on par with RDJ’s cameo at the end of The Incredible Hulk.
• When the cars in this movie are beat to hell, they LOOK beat to hell!

CONS

• The fact that we only see how this movie is connected to the last two movies in one quick scene that could easily be cut out of the movie is kind of an issue.
• There’s a scene at the beginning where Sean’s about to get into a street race, and when he the jockey douche are discussing their terms, the girlfriend decides that the winner keeps her. I’m not sure how I feel about that…
• I’m not sure if I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but I wasn’t fully understanding what the issue was between Han and the Yakuza. But I don’t think it matters necessarily.

I’m going to give this movie two overall ratings; as just an action thriller it is a solid film and I give it an 8.5 out of 10! But, as a Fast and Furious movie, i have to go a bit lower and give this a 7 out of 10… Let’s see where they go from here I guess.