Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Here's a movie for all the people who came out of Lost in Translation thinking, "You know, that movie was ok, but not enough drift racing!" I'm not ashamed to admit that I was one of those people. I'm not ashamed to admit that here on my blog, that is, where maybe 2 people will read a post on a good day. It's not like I'm going to walk into work tomorrow and say, "Hey, everybody! I would rather watch a second sequel to a bad Vin Diesel movie than some pretentious piece of shit that got nominated for a half dozen oscars." I'm not going to do that, even though it's all true.

But we were talking about Toyko Drift. It's a safe bet that nobody is going to walk out of this movie thinking, "You know, that movie was ok, but not enough drift racing." I've never seen more drift racing crammed into one feature length film. In fact, I've never seen more drift racing anywhere, at anytime. Nor would I want to, but that's neither here nor there. This movie contains the long-theorized theoretical limit of Drift Racing in any motion picture. This movie's use of drift racing could become the next standard universal constant. If this movie contained any more drift racing at all, the amount of drift racing would start to stretch into the infinity. Long story short, there's a lot of drifting in this movie.

And it's pretty good drifting, as far as these things go. In case you haven't seen any of the commercials, drifting is where you turn your car and brake in such a way that you, well, drift around corners. As they say, if you ain't out of control, you ain't in control. (And as a brief aside... that line wasn't even in the movie. We've all heard Bow Wow (nee little) say it in the trailer, but if it was actually in the movie, I must've zoned out because I didn't hear it. Lame.) All things considered, it's a really neat way to drive a car, but it isn't much of a premise on which to base an entire movie. Being able to slide around a corner isn't much of a hook, or, as Hitchcock called it, a "macGuffin."

But I liked it. This was a pretty good Fast and the Furious movie. I had some doubts going in. After all, what is there to say about a movie that even Paul Walker turned down? But then I remembered all of the movies that Paul Walker actually agreed to do, and I felt a lot better. It's not like he turned down Tokyo Drift to do a production of The Ice Man Cometh. He did that piece of shit Running Scared and some movie about snow dogs. So this movie isn't really a sequel in the traditional sense, it simply takes place within the same universe as the other Fast and the Furious films. Think about how silly that sounds for a few minutes. Some producer in Hollywood actually said something like, "Hey, baby, this idea of racing cars is too good to pass up. We need another FF movie pronto."

And I'm glad they did. Hell, I hope they keep cranking out these movies every couple years. They're dope. They're just two hours of hot chicks leaning against hot cars. What could be better?

I'll tell you what could be better...




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A cameo by Vin Diesel of course!! No shit. You've got to sit through the entire movie and you just get about 30 seconds at the end... but come on! Diesel! That was the greatest moment in film history. This was even better than Diesel's cameo at the end of The Passion of the Christ where he played God.