The Fast & the Furious Tokyo Drift

The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, whilst remaining part of The Fast & The Furious Franchise, starts over with all new characters and a new continent.  Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is your usual hot headed rule breaker who, whilst proving his driving skill, is involved in a high speed crash that gets him kicked out of school and shipped off to Japan to live with his estranged father.  Daddy runs a tight ship and forbids Sean from driving (another mark on his record and he could be headed for juvy!).  Gee, I wonder where this is going.  At his new school Sean befriends fellow American Twinkie (Bow Wow) and soon finds himself drawn into the world of drift racing, basically driving really fast and sliding, or “drifting” around corners – usually in underground parking stations. 

At a race meet Sean is intrigued by Aussie girl Neela (Nathalie Kelley) and inadvertently pisses off DK the Drift King (Brian Tee) who is – or at least he believes himself to be – a member of the Yakuza.  Sean in all his stupid bravado manages to get himself into a race with DK, which he loses, of course, but catches the eye of DK’s offsider Han (Sung Kang) who take Sean under his wing as his “errand boy”.  Naturally Han teaches Sean how to drift, which sets up the inevitable rematch with DK in the name of honour, love and cars. 

Despite a predictable story the cast manage to engage, although some of the cars have more range than good old boy Lucas Black.  Surprisingly Bow Wow, formally the annoying hip hop artist Little Bow Wow, is actually very good as fast talking Twinkie despite the character treading the path of every black fast talking sidekick in cinema history.   

But let’s face it, you only really watch The Fast &The Furious films for the souped up super cool cars – which TF&TF: Tokyo Drift has in spades.  I am not a big rev head car fan but even I was impressed with some of the driving acrobatics on show.  The cars look good and speeding through the streets of Tokyo or around an empty car park they look great; and sound great.  The “drifting” is probably worth the price of a rental alone.  I’m sure car fans will be very entertained, maybe even by the plot itself.  And the ending should put a smile on the face of any fan of the The Fast & The Furious series.