The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift review

You know it’s going to be a bad movie when:

• The words “Fast” and “Furious” are in the title.
• Lil Bow Wow is on the poster. And he’s the only person you recognize.
• Paul Walker had too much respect for himself to be in this movie.
• The movie was so bad that Lil Bow Wow had to change his name to Bow Wow.
• It’s not on Netflix instant play, not because it’s a good movie, but because no one wants to watch it.
• They didn’t even bother to put any of the actors on the Blu-ray cover.
• This list could go on and on, but I’m sure there will be plenty of reasons why the film is bad once it actually starts.

I mentioned that this wasn’t on Netflix instant-play, meaning that I had to either change around my Netflix queue (not happening– nothing stops my Mad Men Marathon), upgrade my plan (nope, I’m poor) or go out and buy it (ding, ding, ding).

In my perfect world, I thought, there’s no way this near Oscar winning piece of cinema could cost more than 10 bucks right? Wrong. Very wrong.

In my town, the only copy of this God-forsake three-quel happened to be on Blu-Ray. I figured there had to be a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video shutting down somewhere nearby, but there wasn’t. So I forked over $16.30 cents. The money hurt leaving my pocket.

Then I remembered, hey, this is my job. I can write this off. This eased the pain, a little.

After much begging, whining and cajoling, I could convince only one of my friends to endure this pain with me, even with the lure of free beer. Those friends that did return my texts, read like this-

“Hell no.”

“Why would I drive 20 minutes to watch a horrible movie?”

“Kill yourself!”

When my friend came over to watch, his face looked as if I was about to drive him to have his wisdom teeth taken out. This is what F&F does to people.

I decided that it would be a good idea for my friend to keep a running tab of things that appeared in abundance in the first two installments.

The categories were Speedometer shots, moments that were so unbelievable that you yelled “No way” or laughed uncontrollably due to the suspension of reality, unnecessary female roles (counted when a female appears only to appear in a scantily clad outfit without dialogue or purpose other than space filling) and, lastly, horrible dialogue.

Here are the cold hard facts:

Note: These stats are most likely inaccurate for a few reasons: (1) The tallies were so high in some of the categories, who knows if we got them all, (2) Some of these categories are subjective and (3) my friend can’t count.

The first no-way moment is Zachery Ty Bryan’s appearance as a high school student. Yeah, Brad from Home Improvement is in this movie. He was in college when that show went off the air in 1999. He was born in 1981. Meaning that he was 25 for F&FTD, making him the oldest high school senior in recorded history that is still allowed to be on campus with people under 18.

Who cast this movie? No Diesel, no Walker, no-body.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, here’s a plot synopsis from IMDB, because let’s be honest, I’m not going to give you one:

“In order to avoid a jail sentence, Sean Boswell heads to Tokyo to live with his military father. In a low-rent section of the city, Sean gets caught up in the underground world of drift racing.”

And that’s the storyline.

The problem with this movie is that there’s too much action and almost no story. Yes, I know it’s an action movie, but this was more of a roller-coaster than a narrative. I can say that I experienced it, however I didn’t take anything from it.

For example: Was it cool? Yes.

Were the races, chases and cars awesome? Yes, yes and yes.

Was there character development/multiple plot lines or nuances? No, no and no.

The movie was cool. Would I watch it again? No.

Things I did like about the movie:

1. Bow Wow’s name is Twinkie.
2. 5:1 Girl to Guy ratio at all underground events, where clothing seems to be optional
3. DK stands for “drift king”
4. Drifting around a car in a circle, gets girls numbers
5. The plot is very Karate Kid.
6. How fast the main character learned Japanese
7. Vin Diesel Cameo
8. The quotes from critics about this movie- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fast_and_the_furious_tokyo_drift/

This movie may win the Lt. Colonel Austin Travis memorial award (Steven Seagal’s death in Executive Decision) for the weakest ways to kill an important character.

After this movie, people were calling it the death of the franchise. Unfortunately for me, Universal didn’t listen. I think when I watch number four, I will make it a drinking game, so please send in your rules.

To buy Joe’s personally reviewed copy of F&FTD, please place a bid in the comment section.