The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift
Director: Justin Lin
Rated: M
Now screening


The car driven franchise reaches its third lap with a new cast brimming with teenage attitude. Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) constantly gets into trouble due to his penchant for driving illegal races. After another run in with the law, his mother sends him to Tokyo to live with his father. He finds that Tokyo has its own hot bed of fast pumping action. Sean soon gets tangled up with an Asian gang, headed by DK (Brian Tee) who drags him deeper into his sinister crime underground. When Sean's new friends are attacked by DK, he challenges him to a race to the finish, overseen by DK's crimelord Uncle, played by Sonny Chiba.

The previous films in the series gained popularity due to its take on the growing street racing culture. The appeal of seeing souped up cars burn endless rubber certainly transfixed its targeted teen male audience. The films basically copied the 'rebel without a cause' motif, with the lead characters rallying against authority to handle problems by themselves. The producers of those films have dispensed with the usual setting as well as its original stars for this outing. In place of an actual story, they have seemingly aimed to provide a straight up race fest.

The screenplay does attempt to show how Sean handles being in a new country, which adds interest, but is quickly forgotten by the time the next car race comes along.

Lucas Black fails to create any believability or presence, with his character going through the motions of the pedestrian plot whilst talking in a very strange southern accent. The characters in the first two films at least had a reason for their actions; the ones on display here create their own mess, which gains little audience sympathy. The mainly unknown cast try to do their best to act over the noisy car engines, which mercifully drowns out their clichˇd dialogue. Only Asian acting legend Sonny Chiba comes away from this film unscathed, clearly enjoying himself in an over the top role.

The cars have been the main appeal of these films, and they all look suitably outrageous for a popcorn flick like this. The racing scenes are very exciting to watch, with all of them done for real instead of relying on CGI. The look of the film sets it apart from its predecessors as well, with the cinematography framing the Tokyo nightlife in bright neon colours.

The uneven plot and woeful acting expose the fact that this franchise appears to be running on empty. As noble as it was for the producers to try something different the racing scenes needed to be backed up by an involving story, which isn't in evidence here. Despite this, it seems that a fourth film is on the way, with original star Vin Diesel returning to lead duties. Does he have anything left in the tank?

Patrick Moore