Review of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) by Seth S — 12 Oct 2013

Tokyo Drift does offer you more great racing scenes. It's an easy step up from the horrible second movie. It at least offers a few bits of drama and character moments. But the acting is very poor this time around, and the movie seems to draw a lot of inspiration from a superior Japanese TV show called Initial D. The story follows a familiar arc, but the cars and the races are the star of the movie.

The story is of a troubled teen named Sean Boswell. After being arrested for illegal street racing, Sean's mom sends him to live in Tokyo with his dad. Sean makes friends and enemies in Tokyo while racing in the Tokyo drifting scene. He makes a serious enemy in DK, he is a drifting king (hence the name) and Sean loses to him right away. The movie builds up to a climax with a rematch between Sean and DK.

Lucas Black plays Sean. It's a pretty flat performance; really all he does is look intense while racing. The character seems like a less skilled, less likeable, less emotionally driven version of Brian O'Conner. If I understand correctly, Fast & Furious 7 could very well bring Black back to the franchise, I guess I would be fine with that. He's a decent character that I wouldn't mind seeing with the regular "Fast" cast.

Brian Tee plays the villain DK. All he does is grimace behind the wheel...that's literally all he does. He is an improvement over the second movie's villain, but he still is not good. Sung Kang gives the best performance of the movie as Han. The character could very well be my favorite in the entire series. He shows up in 3 other "Fast" movies and he is excellent whenever he does. Han provides most of the emotional push of the story. Without him, there really wouldn't be any real weight to the movie.

I like the racing in this. Tokyo Drift was director Justin Lin's first Fast & Furious movie out of four, so he doesn't have action scenes perfected yet. Still, all the races are far and away better than anything in 2 Fast 2 Furious. The drifting aspect brings originality to the series, and is fun to watch. Also, given the events of the later movies, Tokyo Drift does play an important part in the grand scheme of things. While the acting is pretty bad, this movie does just enough right to warrant a positive reaction.

"I have money, its trust and character I need around me. You know, who you choose to be around you lets you know who you are. One car in exchange for knowing what a man's made of? That's a price I can live with." 6/10.