Fast & Furious 6 (Justin Lin, 2013)

Since we last saw them, the Fast Family are enjoying retirement after their heist in Rio. That all changes when Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) arrives on Dominic Toretto's (Vin Diesel) doorstep.

Hobbs wants to recruit Dom's crew to help him hunt down a team of hi-tech thieves led by ex-special forces soldier Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) who are trying to steal components to assemble a doomsday device.

When Dom declines, Hobbs presents him with evidence that his deceased love, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), is alive - and a member of Shaw's crew.

What is with the titles of these movies? I feel like since 2009, the franchise found its footing on all fronts - including in the brevity of its titles.

I always thought this movie was called Fast 6 - it does not help that the next movie is called Furious 7.

Anyway, onto the movie!

This is the movie where I clicked into Fast 6 (or Furious 6, as it is styled in the credits). I don’t love the movie but it is my gateway into the franchise. On this viewing, it also helped me to clarify my feelings about the previous entry.

Fast Five is the assembly of the key elements, but it is let down by the franchise’s established tone, which was far more earnest and bluntly emotional. Fast & Furious 6 is where irony enters the picture - you can see it sneaking it in around the corners, but the movie still carries the earnestness of the previous movies.

That movie also shifted format, toward a heist plot with more overt action movie elements (the appearance of Luke Hobbs being a major part of that shift). But the villain is bland and under-utilised, and the heist aspect does not feel as original as the genre shifts in later entries.

There is something weird and off about the first half of the movie.

This is the first one of these screenings I went with a friend, and he brought up how unremarkable the London locations are.

There is something overtly contrived about Letty’s amnesia that feels like the franchise trying to correct the narrative moves of previous movies. The soap opera-ness of the Fast movies was a detriment in the previous movies, largely because it was focused on the triangle of Dom, Brian and Mia. The ensemble aspect means that we get a broader variety of subplots, which made me more interested. The doomed romance of Han and Giselle is delivered with only a few moments of screen-time. I enjoy those moments, and I think the climax is delivered with the right amount of panache, but the emotional impact is not quite there. Sung Kang’s performance is fantastic - I wish he was in the movies more.

Luke Evans’s Owen Shaw is a better villain than the previous entries, but he still feels like an idea rather than a character. These movies are more about set pieces than characters, but I think it is a real detriment that the franchise has never found (or committed to) a legitimately strong antagonist.

Having an evil team of drivers is still a great idea, and it is part of why I enjoy the movie. On his own terms, Shaw is not that threatening, but in the action sequences - when our heroes have to fight his crew - the movie clicks. Behind the wheel, our heroes are superhuman.

But when Roman and Han are trying to fight Joe Taslim (The Raid) or Michelle Rodriguez is facing off with Gina Carano, the movie gains real stakes. It is more satisfying watching our heroes actually have to struggle to win - it is not as well- conceived as I would like it to (our heroes, particularly Dom and Brian, still feel disconnected from any kind of pain or recognition of pain from their exploits).

While the London section of the film carries a patina of blandness, when the movie moves to Spain, I get into the movie, because it is when the franchise turns into a full-on action extravaganza.

The tank chase and the runway fight/chase are incredible, and that third act double-act of action sequences are when, for me, the franchise finally reaches its sweet spot. Cars suddenly become mythical objects that give the characters superpowers - Hobbs’ line from Five about not letting the team get into cars is suddenly rendered in more supernatural terms. 

There are so many great moments - Dom's superman-like catching of Letty as she jumps off the tank; Dom and Hobbs' combo body tackle-flying head-butt of one of Owen's goons; Giselle's heroic sacrifice (and Han's enraged vengeance). These scenes are the right side of action movie excess, with just the right sprinkling of humour and melodrama. Later movies go bigger and more cartoonish, but the balance in Fast & Furious 6 feels right.

The third act is so strong that it cancelled out how uninteresting the first half of the movie is. 

I feel like this movie gets a bit forgotten in the franchise - it is not as big of a shift as Fast Five, and it does not come with the baggage of Furious 7, but on its own terms it is pretty fun. Some of it is unintentional - the end sequence where Hobbs and Dom come to terms is so weird in terms of its blocking that my audience burst out laughing - but it feels more secure than Five, and it feels like the ensemble have more room to colour their characters.

In many ways, I feel like F6, not F5, set the template for the franchise, moving the series toward the realm of international espionage and global threats. Furious 7 and Fate of the Furious would continue this trend, with the family jetting all over the world to rev their engines in the name of world peace.

More poignantly, this movie is also the end of an era: it is the last movie to feature series regulars Han and Giselle, it is the last movie directed by Justin Lin (until he made his return for F9), and it is the last movie to star Paul Walker before his death in November 2013. 

Later movies would make billions and the ensemble would expand to include more big names, but - at least on this re-watch - Fast & Furious 6 feels like the peak of what F&F could be. 

Previous posts

The Fast and the Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift 

Fast & Furious

Fast Five

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Fast Five (Justin Lin, 2011)

Fresh off breaking Dom (Vin Diesel) out of prison, Toretto, Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) are looking for a big score so they can retire. After a drug kingpin (Joaquim de Almeida) tries to kill them, our heroes decide he is that big score. 

Such a big score will take a little more manpower than Dom, Brian and Mia call on a few friends to help them commit the heist of the century.

The only thing standing in their way is not the drug lord - it is a man mountain named Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).

Will the Family succeed?

Ironically, considering how important it is in the franchise, I missed this one in theatres. I caught it later on TV.

I missed this week’s screening - the theatre pushed the time back too late and with an epic 130 runtime I did not want to be home at midnight.

So I opted for streaming. 

While it is not always the case, I do find the big screen can give a movie a little more magic - it did not help 2 Fast, 2 Furious - but for the majority of these reviews, I have enjoyed the movies more. For movies like this, I think it helps because it means I am not surfing the web/social media during dull patches.

Re-watching it this time, I really wish I could have seen it on the big screen. I watched the movie but having the option of checking out really affected my experience. 

Man, I remember the excitement/surprise when this movie came out, and it actually made me excited to see it. Sadly, when I watched it, I remember not liking it.

Despite its rep as the best entry, there are elements of Fast Five which always held it down (when I watched it).

 Before I get into that, I will get into what this movie gets right - first off the bat, this movie knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be.

From the opening bus flip, into the main title, Fast Five wants to be an OTT action movie. It is interesting tonally, because I felt like it still carried the earnestness of the first four entries. 

It is fascinating watching now-familiar characters coming together. It is more interesting to watch established characters remade into new roles - Tej has evolved into a tech wizard, while Roman Pierce has evolved from the loose cannon of 2F2F to the  wisecracking everyman who cannot believe how ridiculous their situations are. Some of these evolutions are still being worked out - Roman has not moved into full-on parody yet, for one - but for all intents and purposes Fast Five is the beginning of the franchise as a dominant player.

While he is only onscreen for minutes, this movie re-affirmed Sung Kang as the most magnetic member of the Fast Family. He is so cool and understated in this overblown movie that he stands out even more. I do not get the chemistry in his romance with Gizelle - we do not really see them get together - but Kang plays it so well (his murmured ‘I think I’m in love’ after watching her drift around corners is great) that it almost comes off. I cannot wait to see him come back in Fast 9.

The re-appearance which carried the most weight, weirdly, was Matt Schulze as Vince. In the first movie, Vince was Dom’s best friend and confidant - he does not trust Brian and cottons on early that he is a cop. In Fast Five, their roles are reversed. The filmmakers are smart enough to use that backstory, giving the scenes between Vince and Brian a tension that makes some otherwise boring ‘family’ scenes watchable.

There is a real frustration to Schulze’s performance that works - he is watching the man who destroyed his life frolicking around with his best friend. He is in the position Brian was in the first movie.

Watching Schulze present as the crew assembles, I felt a tinge of pathos. Here is the franchise shedding the last pieces of the original movie to grow into something new. 

Bringing in Dwayne Johnson was a great move. I remember when I was younger wondering why Diesel and Johnson never made a movie together - like the other parts of this movie, their showdown in Fast Five felt like the universe coming into alignment.

Johnson’s humourless one-note performance is great. He is also not in the movie as much as I thought he would be, which made him pop even more. 

Every time he stomps on screen, the movie feels funnier and more self-aware than every other scene. Johnson’s lines and actions feel like action movie cliches, but they never feel stale - maybe because there is no hint of irony to any of it.

Having Johnson in the movie also threw into relief how stale Diesel feels in this movie - he rumbles his lines with the same deliberate cadence, but he feels lethargic compared with Johnson’s energized performance. It is ironic how the worm turns - Hobbs and Shaw burned me out on the Rock - it will be interesting to see how my feelings evolve over the course of these re-viewings.

Because of all these qualities I wish I liked the movie more. The action sequences are shot clean and clear - there is none of the shaky-cam from the previous movie - and there are some effectively cinematic emotional moments (the beat where Hobbs thinks he is about to die is genuinely affecting).

My problem with Fast Five is that I do not connect with anything. The central characters are an important part of the ensemble, but like Fast & Furious, when the movie is focused on our core trio I just lose interest in the movie. 

I cannot get it out of my head that - at this point in the franchise - Diesel is making these movies to keep his box office up enough to make another Riddick movie. He is trying to play a hardened badass, cool and silent, but I prefer Diesel when he is more dynamic and exposed. He is so magnetic in the first movie, but here he feels a little checked out. 

Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster are fine together but they fade into the furniture when they are juxtaposed with everyone else. The movie wants the movie to be about their relationship maturing but I did not care at all.

All the characters are essentially action figures but I feel like the later movies figured out how to juggle them a bit better, and with more of a sense of irony. I like my action earnest but this movie needs more of a sense of humour.

I also wish the gang were going after a scheme with a little more stakes - there is a whole midsection where they are trying to work out how to break into the police station - they spend a long time on a gambit that keeps failing, and then switch to another scenario. I feel like it would have been more dramatic to bring forward Hobbs earlier as a fly in the ointment. 

Hobbs also cancels out the villain of the piece - Joaquim de Almeida is terrific casting as an action movie bad ‘un but he is just a rich guy in a suit. He does not even have cool henchmen or anything. 

I feel if I cared more about the characters and it had a tighter story with a stronger antagonist, I might like Fast Five as much as everyone else does. The movie is also way too long - this became another trend with the franchise as the movies expanded the cast and the gave them their own subplots. I am a fan of this ensemble format, but it will make it tough for watching these movies every Saturday night.

My feelings aside, this is a really important movie - it established the franchise for the 2010s, and probably helped Hollywood in its conversion to extended universes. Take that, Marvel - Vin Diesel won that race too.

Now that the franchise is up and running, it will be interesting to see if the momentum can be maintained for Fast & Furious 6.

Previous posts

The Fast and the Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift 

Fast & Furious

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)

When he loses his job due to the Great Depression, Verdoux (Charles Chaplin) turns to a new career: romancing, swindling and murdering wealthy widows. 

I have not seen much of Charles Chaplin’s work. I watched Modern Times at university years ago, and I watched this film a couple weeks ago.

Coming at it as a novice, Monsieur Verdoux is fascinating. I am keen to watch more of Chaplin’s work, but on its own terms this movie is really fascinating.

You can tell that the filmmaker is coming at the film from a sensibility rooted in visual story-telling rather than dialogue. The photography favours wide, static shots that allow for Chaplin’s various physical gags. Chaplin’s sense of timing and choreography is perfect - the physicality of the set pieces is impressive, particularly in terms of how manages to juggle the film’s tone.

There is a deliciously dark vein of irony to these scenes, particularly the subplot with Annabella, played by the divine Martha Raye. Loud and brash, she is set up as the perfect target for being a) rich and b) completely self-absorbed. Raye is a riot, storming through the movie with all the tact of a tank through a playground. While there are certainly reasons to dislike her - she repeatedly hires and fires her maid for ridiculous reasons - there is something weirdly winning about the woman.

She glides through the movie, both completely unaware of, and impervious to, Verdoux’s various attempts to murder her. Their scene on the lake is a masterpiece of black comedy, as Verdoux’s attempts to rid himself of the woman are foiled in increasingly ridiculous ways.

While Chaplin is great in the title role, Annabella is the movie’s secret weapon - I have never seen Raye before, and she stole every scene she was in.

While the film handles its murderous subplots with assurance, the film falters when it comes to Verdoux’s motivation.

The reveal of Verdoux’s family, his disabled wife and young child, comes off as so cloying and ridiculous. The camera dwells on his wife’s impairment in a way that feels so cliched and manipulative that it almost threw me out of the movie. It almost unbalanced the movie. This sequence is also so detached from the rest of the movie that the portrayal of his wife just comes off as offensive stereotyping - she exists purely so that we have sympathy for Verdoux’s plight.

The film is on surer footing when it comes to the way it portrays society's indifference to the humanity of ordinary people struggling through the Depression. Verdoux's final speech, in which points out the different moral standard between murderers and state-sanctioned violence, frankly feels more defined and disturbing. It made me wonder if the film would have worked if Chaplin had nixed the family subplot.

The scenes that work better are Verdoux’s redemptive scenes with Marilyn Nash, a poor woman he picks up with the intention of poisoning, are better. However, the scene where he calls off his murder attempt is nicely underplayed but after the reveal of his family I could not quite trust these attempts to redeem him. In these scenes with Nash, you get a sense of Verdoux’s immense loneliness and self-awareness that brings more of an edge and pathos to his schemes.

While the subplot with his family is dire, Monsieur Verdoux is worth checking out. Its stumbles highlight how tricky it is to achieve its particular tone, but when it works Monsieur Verdoux is hilarious.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Fast & Furious (Justin Lin, 2009)

Five years after the events of the first film, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is living in Central America, boosting gas tankers and other shady jobs.

When girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is murdered, Dom returns home to get vengeance on the cartel behind her death.

This puts him on a collision course with Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), now working for the FBI and on his own mission to bring down the cartel.

Brought together by circumstance, will the former friends put aside their differences to take down the bad guys?

And thus we reach a crucial point, both in the Fast & Furious saga, and also in my viewing experience - Fast & Furious is the last movie in the franchise that I have never seen before.

Weirdly I do remember this movie coming out. There was a promotional piece in Empire magazine with soundbites from key cast, and there was a line from Vin Diesel in which he talked about how he felt comfortable returning to a franchise after working on Find Me Guilty with Sidney Lumet. Reading that, I could not help rolling my eyes - the previous year I had caught a free screening of Diesel's last vehicle Babylon A.D. That movie was not great and died at the box office, so Diesel's return to F&F felt like an attempt to rebuild his box office credibility.

‘New model. Original parts.’ At the time this movie’s tagline felt cheesy. Now it feels oddly poignant. After watching the first three movies, this movie feels like the stars coming into alignment.

It helps the franchise finally had a director who understood the tenets of the franchise. Under Justin Lin’s sure hand, the cast and all the familiar tropes (the cars, the music, the montages of woman gyrating etc) feel of a piece.

The plot is still generic undercover action nonsense, but having the old gang together gave the proceedings a bit of juice (or NOS). What struck me about this movie was how much of a two-hander it is between Dom and Brian. The movie is premised on resolving the conflicts of the first movie, which makes it feel like a remake of 2 Fast 2 Furious, which tried to transpose the distrust with Dom to Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson). The narrative of this movie reminded me of other long-delayed sequels, which try to use the time away to give their stories added gravitas (Tron Legacy, Bad Boys For Life).

While the previous movies felt like time capsules for overusing certain techniques, this movie came out post-Bourne, with more aggressive editing and handheld camera. After the clean filmmaking of Tokyo Drift, I was surprised at this turn - it felt like a regression.

That being said, this style choice is not as prevalent as in, for instance, Quantum of Solace.

The cast are pretty good - Diesel seems to relish Dom’s revenge storyline, giving the character a simmering menace which is a little generic but for the character, it is interesting. The movie leans into Diesel’s bulked-up physique, giving Dom more of a exaggerated physicality comparable to the action heroes of old - it also feels like a trait that was pushed further in the later instalments. This is the last movie in which Diesel is the hard body figure of the series - after the Rock’s Luke Hobbs shows up, Dom is pitched more towards everyman territory.

Weirdly, the performer I found most interesting was Walker. Introduced in a parkour chase that feels like a budget version of late noughties action set pieces, Brian is now a super-pro, an FBI agent who knows his way around law enforcement and the underworld. He cannot quite sell the character’s burnout, or his remorse for breaking up the Toretto family, but he has an inherent solidness that is compelling.

Sung Kang has a small cameo as Han - I was surprised at how small his role was.

Gal Gadot makes her first appearance as Giselle, who became a Fast Family member in the next movie. Here she is a minor enforcer for the main bad guy - she has a romantic subplot with Dom that falls flat. Gadot is not the strongest actress, and this role demands a charisma and humour that she does not have. 

This movie was a big hit but at the end of watching it, I felt underwhelmed. Ultimately the movie feels like an amped-up sequel (basically a more epic versionof the original movie). Having more Dom, Brian and Mia was good, but this movie also highlights how effective they are in small doses. They need to be part of an ensemble. They - and I as a viewer - need the Family.

It would take one more movie for the franchise to finally realise itself.

Previous post

The Fast and the Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Roadkill (TV, 2020)

Peter Lawrence (Hugh Laurie) is a rising star in the Government who has just won’t court case against a journalist alleging he was involved in corrupt dealings.

Having barely escaped the fire, Laurence is feeling invulnerable - until he learns that he may have a daughter in prison. His problems are compounded when he is promoted to Justice Minister...

I had a good feeling about Roadkill. The cast were great and the concept of a politician discovering he has a now-grown child in prison sounded like great pulp.

The character of Peter Lawrence is interesting - a self-made man who is so popular with the public, they are willing to overlook his various faux pas. It is hard not to read the story as a riff on Boris Johnson’s rise to power, as Laurence battles through personal crisis while undermining his unpopular prime minister (the late Helen McCrory in her final role).

There are some key differences - Lawrence has a belief system that he follows to the bitter end. It is an incredibly self-serving ideology that becomes clearer as the series progresses.  

While appropriately cynical and morally ambiguous, the show never quite rises above a simmer.

The subplot with Lawrence’s daughter is interesting, and I was interested in seeing more of Rose’s (Shalom Franklin-Brune) machinations inside. While the story’s ultimate intent is very different, the concept of a prisoner pulling the strings of the higher-ups would make a compelling show in its own right.

Laurie is suitably two-faced, but while there is something compelling about the character’s self-serving logic, I felt unmoved and unsurprised by the series finale: Is Lawrence showing greater level of duplicity? Is his regard for his third daughter genuine or based on his recognition of her willingness to break with societal norms?

These questions are interesting, but as the credits rolled I felt no need to hypothesis on them.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Bad Mothers (TV, 2019)

When Charlotte (Melissa George) is found dead, her friend Sarah (Tess Haubrich) and the community's 'bad mothers' join forces to figure out who the perpetrator is.

Over the last couple weeks I have caught up on a couple of streaming TV shows.

I was trawling through TVNZ OnDemand and stumbled on this. On the surface, Bad Mothers sounded like a good idea. 

The show feels dead. It is watchable but it just comes off like a dehydrated vegetable. You can see what it is, but it needs cooking.

The premise has been done before, with more relish for the melodrama and wit by Desperate Housewives. The show does not have a unique angle to this idea, and despite the Australian setting, the show lacks any sense of cultural specificity.

What is weird is that this show comes from Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan, some of the brains behind the New Zealand TV show Outrageous Fortune. That show was specific in context and its angle on its genre - this show feels like it has been noted to death.

I tried looking for reviews of the show, and I ended up finding articles critiquing the show for its retrograde portrayal of women. I cannot argue with that - this show is weirdly conservative in how the characters think of their roles as wives and mothers. The big problem is that the show has no angle on what it means to be a mother, nor any idea on how to tackle this kind of soap opera.  

This show has all the resonance of a commercial. Some of the supporting characters have interesting subplots: Bindy (Shalom Brune-Franklin) is a former teen mum who is having to grapple with parenting solo after her parents leave; Maddie (Mandy McElhinney) is in conflict with her ex (NZ actor Michaela Banas) over their son.

I have to chalk it up to those two particular characters that the show was compelling enough for me to blast through all eight episodes.

While the supporting players get some interesting dramatic meat and humour, the lead characters and performances feel calibrated to one emotional setting. Granted, they are dealing with a murder, but there is a blankness to protagonist Sarah (Tess Haubrich), her husband/accused murderer Anton (Daniel MacPherson) and the deceased's husband Kyle (Don Hany), who form the key triangle of relationships, that made the central mystery un-compelling.

It is not good. At all. But it is not bad enough to be entertaining in the other way. I am kind of embarrassed I made it to the finale.

A pity. There is probably a place for a show like this that had more passion and originality.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (Justin Lin, 2006)

After a bit of hell-raising gone wrong, teen street racer Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is saved from prison when his mom sends him to live with his dad in Japan.

Sean quickly falls into the local underground 'drifting' scene, in which racers 'drift' around corners. After Sean destroys his car, mature racer Han (Sung Kang) takes him under his wing to repay his debt. He also teaches him how to drift...

Thank the drifting gods for this movie. Halfway through 2 Fast 2 Furious I was considering pulling the plug on this review series.

Right from the opening scene, Tokyo Drift feels alive and specific in a way that the previous movies never did.

Stylistically the previous movies felt like they were forcing in constant flash and stylistic flourishes that never feel functional. With the arrival of Justin Lin, the franchise finally feels like it is coming of age.

This movie also marks the arrival of longtime scribe Chris Morgan and composer Brian Tyler, who have - with some exceptions - been the stable creative force in the series to this day.

The story is a fairly typical riff on the coming of age template: a young outcast falls under the wing of an older mentor and learns how to mature and tame his self-destructive instincts through the mastery of a new skill. It may not be original but the story is functional, and Lin shoots it with a grasp on pathos, action and humour that was missing in the preceding movies.

What is interesting about this movie is that my feelings about it are essentially the inverse of how I felt towards Parts 1 and 2: the story is well-directed and creates an interesting world, but the main character is a blank.

Lucas Black is miscast. He is a fine actor, but he does not have the same easy charm of the series' previous leads. It really made me appreciate Paul Walker’s work as Brian - he may be a bit stiff, but Walker could play the cockiness while also being charming. There is an empathy and integrity to Walker that made Brian believable as the earnest lead of an action movie. Nothing groundbreaking, but he fit the role. Black just disappears. Hopefully, he gets some more character development in Fast 9.

As his love interest, Nathalie Kelley feels somewhat more in town with the movie, but as the movie went on and she had to share scenes with Brian Tee, it began to feel like she was too small for this movie.

While it is detriment in terms of the films’ protagonist, the movie is impeccably cast in the supporting players: Bow Wow is charming as Black’s friend Twinkie, Sung Kang is charisma personified as series favourite Han, and Brian Tee is absolutely magnetic as the antagonist Takashi. I know Tee’s name but I do not think I have seen him in anything. He is charismatic, cool and very intimidating - the movie gets a jolt of electricity every time he is onscreen. 

Apparently Lucas Black and Bow Wow are appearing in Fast 9 - here is hoping Teecan join the team as well.

We also get an appearance from action icon Sonny Chiba as Takashi’s uncle, a local Yakuza who becomes a major obstacle as the movie heads into the home stretch.

The vehicular action is very  well-staged. The previous movies went overboard with the virtual camera moves and hyperactive editing. Here, the action is shot with clarity and a sense of geography. The sound design also adds to the tension, particularly in the sequences when are hero is trying to learn how to drift around corners properly. For the first time in the series, there is a genuine sense of peril to the action.

The franchise has now gone international, so cars speeding through various locales is now familiar. What makes Tokyo Drift stand out is that the filmmakers do not turn the Japanese locale into an exotic backdrop. It feels specific and lived-in - there no montages of unique places or obvious fish-out-of-water jokes. We do not even get that many flashy establishing shots of impressive locations - it makes the scene-setting feel immersive rather than a backdrop for cool car stunts. 

Of the films I have seen this far, Tokyo Drift is the one I want to re-watch. Despite some issues, this movie is the most dramatically satisfying. I can see why the fanbase gravitate towards this one. This movie was the NOS boost I needed heading into the next batch of entries - it was actually exciting to see Vin Diesel pop up at the end. 

Bring on Fast & Furious…

Previous posts

The Fast and the Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.