First Take: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift- it’s ranting time

SYPNOSIS:

A teenager becomes a major competitor in the world of drift racing after moving in with his father in Tokyo to avoid a jail sentence in America.

2006. Reboot time. And with Justin Lin at the helm, there is a lot of promise and potential- but much like the film before this, I just couldn’t get into the 3rd installment of the Fast franchise.

Lin does direct the film well, with a lot of consideration to the racing scenes themselves, something which the films up to this point have lacked, but once again it is the script and the story that forms the majority of my issues with the film. Sure, Chris Morgan’s screenplay has promise, but I really couldn’t get into the new characters at all.

Performance wise, there isn’t really anything of interest to note, but I can definitely say that Lucas Black is the driving force of this film, keeping things rolling along. But for all the negatives, there are positives, most notably the cinematography and music. It is shot very well by Stephen Windon, and for the first time in the series we have a blaring Brian Tyler score. This isn’t the best film in the series, if anything, this is a passable entry to the franchise.

THE VERDICT

With action turned up to 11, Tokyo Drift had promise, but with a poor script and some very weak characters, I was left feeling very unimpressed.

Rating: 3/5