So this review is probably going to be totally biased, but I am going to be cool and just get this out of the way up front. Out of all the young actors drudging away out there right now, I have to say my favorite is that weird little boy from Sling Blade, Lucas Black. He’s just impossible. Why? Because he’s not only funny, and totally rural with a body like a shit brick house, but he’s also totally talented with a body like a shit brick house, right? Lucas gets to show off his body during one of the lamer moments of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but seeing him standing there in a towel in a Japanese bathhouse facing down some gigantor Sumo dude with some wolf-dragon tattoo all over his back kind of redeems the poor set up.
So the movie is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and it’s the third movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise, but this one manages to not hold on to any of the cast of the first two movies (well except for one cameo), but as strange as it sounds, the movie is better off. I don’t know what got into Producer Neal Moritz’s head, but it’s like once he was free from having to worry about what Paul Walker would be doing this time or somehow coming up with a good story and the greenbacks to hire Vin Diesel again, well, I think it made him think outside the box.
Lucas Black plays Sean Boswell, and in the early moments of the film we see him all zombie like through a day in the life of his school. Boswell smiles a lot, and tries to be a good kid. He even takes notes in his class, but it’s clear he doesn’t belong, and we don’t have to wait long to figure out why. Turns out Black a) doesn’t take well to authority and b) yeah man: he’s totally addicted to speed.
Boswell totally pisses off my boyfriend Jake by talking with me and that leads to an intense race through an under construction suburb. When the race ends in horrific fashion Boswell is faced with two choices. He can either go and live with his Navy-man dad in Tokyo, Japan or he can go to juvy hall and possibly get tried as an adult. But if he goes to Tokyo, he needs to stay off the speed. Because he’s addicted. And he can’t get enough. Well he goes to Tokyo, but his weird hooker-loving father doesn’t do much to stop Boswell from engaging in his true love: SPEED. In fact Boswell is in Tokyo for all of 24 hours before he loses his first race there, becomes a stone in the boot of gangsters, and ends up looking oh so sexy in his Japanese school uniform.
So yeah. The movie isn’t going to be winning any awards on the festival circuit. Like the title of these movies have always suggested, these Fast and the Furious movies veer into exploitation territory without being a straight up homage like the stuff Tarantino squeezes out. But Tokyo Drift has a couple really good things going for it that seems to elevate the movie above the first two.
First, whose ever idea it was to set the movie in Japan should win a lifetime achievement award. The setting works on so many levels. I mean you have this totally hunky guy who becomes an outsider, and you really want him to make something of himself because deep down you know he’s a good kid. Placing him in an alien environment is just a whole lot of fun for the audience. The whole idea behind drifting is interesting and I guess it’s real, but when Boswell first has to race using the technique the result is something people would be more used to seeing from Johnny Knoxville than Walker or Diesel in the first movies who were like the epitome of cool and calm drivers. Japan’s landscape also plays an important character in the movie. I am going to be a little hyperbolic here. Because I can. But there is one chase scene through the crowded streets of Tokyo that I honestly believe will one day rank up there with the most exciting visual moments in any film. I can’t even imagine how they pulled off the scene, but it’s clear that some special effects where involved. But damn. I mean who cares about car chases now? I mean we’ve seen it all, but there is one moment where I sat there gripping my boyfriend’s hand like an iron vice, there was not a sound to be heard in that theater. It literally left ME speechless and breathless. It was that exciting to me.
So that could lead me to my second good thing about the movie. Director Justin Lin is a really talented guy! I have never seen any of his movies and one just opened up like 4 months ago I think. That was Annapolis and the trailers really didn’t inspire much in me, but here he’s all WOW and HOW’D YOU DO THAT? Lin really plunges you into another world with sites and sounds, and the movie kind of becomes something of it’s own. Again, I think filming on location in Japan helped a lot with this because for most dumb yokels like me, that’s about as alien as you can get, but Lin does a lot to put you right in the shoes of the young hunky hero, and he does a lot to put you in the drivers seat of these cars that are crazy dangerous. Lin manages a good story even though the script is more than a little lame. I mean here’s a movie where criminal conspiracies and murder get resolved through a BIG RACE. It’s dumb even for me, but somehow Lin makes it work.
Next, as I said above Lucas Black is just great in this movie. I think he’s pretty special and I had never really thought about him before turning up in Friday Night Lights last year. And then he ended up with the best role in Jarhead. He stole every scene he was in, and considering the cast he was working with, that couldn’t have been easy. In Tokyo Drift, Black is the typical good kid in WAY over his head. Look, his only defining character trait as written is that he loves to race and he’s actually good at it. There’s not much to work with there, but Black manages to invest some life into Sean Boswell. So much so that I wouldn’t mind seeing another Fast and Furious movie with him as the lead again. But next time? It should be in Texas. And next time? I want Black to shift my gears.
Okay and finally, and this is a weird one. The music in this movie is pretty cool. Usually I don’t notice movie soundtracks. At. All. It’s just background noise, but I know it makes things work, but here the music is so freakin’ cool! Unlike the first two movies, they seemed to go easy on the hiphopcentric tunes, and the results are pretty slick. Make sure you listen to one piece using some kind of Asian bell instrument which I totally need to get for a dance routine next year. The soundtrack is also loaded with all kinds of weird and energetic Japanese pop and rock. Like the rest of the movie, the soundtrack is creative and fun! I MUST HAVE AND IT’S STILL NOT AVAILABLE ON ITUNES!
So I guess this is one of those movies that falls into the dumb fun category, but really, other than the terrible dialog and a few questionable casting decision, it’s not all that dumb. I could have done without Bow Wow or whatever he’s called. His character ain’t bad, but he doesn’t do a lot to enrich my life as a person, but he also didn’t make things worse.
In closing, I hope the movie is a hit. Lucas Black seems like a good guy, and he’s definitely a lot different than most young actors out there now, and I like that. We need that variety right?
And remember my casting and location suggestions for the next one.
