AmateurMovieReviews.com

The Fast and the Furious franchise has done a lot to bring the world of souped-up sports cars and street drag racing to the mainstream consciousness. The two previous movies starred Paul Walker and featured a bit of continuity in terms of the main character and the background story. In The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the filmmakers abandon the Brian O'Connor character and the undercover cop angle altogether.

This film stars Lucas Black (the actor who played opposite Billy Bob Thornton in 1996's Slingblade) as a troubled high school student named Sean Boswell. Sean and his mother have moved several times in the past few years, mostly because Sean keeps getting in trouble and getting kicked out of school.

Within five minutes of the opening credits, we see why Sean gets in trouble: he has an affinity for drag racing. When he gets into a confrontation with one of the other students about a girl, they decide to settle the score by racing. They choose a subdivision area that's still under construction, break in, and race. Sean and the other boy not only wreck their own cars, but do a lot of damage to the subdivision as well. This time, Sean is facing jail, so his mother sends him to Tokyo to live with his father, who's stationed over there with the U.S. Navy.

It's not long before Sean discovers the car racing scene in Tokyo as well, despite his father's warning that he stay away from cars. Tokyo style racing is different than anything Sean has ever seen. Because there's no hope of finding a long enough stretch of unused road in Tokyo to have a race, the would-be racers instead test their skills in parking garages and on winding mountain roads. They engage in something called "drifting," whereby drivers navigate sharp turns by shifting, using the handbrake, and then sliding around the turn.

On Sean's very first night at the Tokyo races, he gets into a confrontation with "DK" (played by Brian Tee), the reigning Drift King of the region. DK challenges Sean to a race, and another guy named Han (Sung Kang) loans Sean a car for the challenge. Of course DK shows off all his brilliant moves, while all Sean can do is smash up Han's car into a worthless pile of junk. After that, Sean hangs with Han in order to work off his debt and also get some drift lessons.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out where this storyline is headed. Of course Sean is going to learn how to drift and of course there's going to be a rematch with DK during the last part o the movie. And I'm sure you can guess the outcome of the race before it even starts. Do you feel like you've seen this sort of thing before? Of course you have!

I thought The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was one of the worst movies I've ever seen (and remember, I recently watched that Ben Affleck bomb, Surviving Christmas). There were so many problems with the movie that I hardly know where to begin. The plot is completely ridiculous, so it's not even worth picking it apart. Instead, I'll start with Lucas Black.

First of all, there's no way this actor could pass for an 18-year-old high school student. I mean, in real life Black is 24 years old, and he looks even older than that thanks to his receding hairline. I'm not sure why the filmmakers couldn't find someone that looked like a high school kid to play the lead. It couldn't have been because they were attracted by Black's acting talent, because he has none if this movie is any indication. He was terrible in this role and his performance served to irritate me in nearly every single scene.

I do have to admit that most of the racing sequences were exciting to watch, but that's not enough to carry the whole film. If I had to recommend this movie to a friend, I'd be very tempted to tell him or her to just watch the race scenes and fast forward through everything else. They wouldn't miss much of the plot anyway!

Save your money and an hour and 40 minutes of your life by skipping The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.