Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift

Okay... Okay... I gave in and decided to watch Tokyo Drift. I did not go out of my way to watch this movie, it just happened to be starting when I was channel surfing. I take back everything I said when I did my Fast & Furious review, I decided not to skip it... Do I regret not skipping it... well...

Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift follows a story of totally unrelated characters to the franchise so far. One of the characters will have a bigger part in later movies, and one will have a lame cameo in Furious 7, outside of that, this movie is totally unrelated to the rest of the franchise.

What's also weird is that this movie actually takes place in between Fast 6 and Furious 7... for some reason...

Enter our hero, Sean Boswell (played by Lucas Black). He's your typical misunderstood delinquent, who just keeps getting in trouble due to his fascination with car racing. Oh yeah... and he has an annoying southern twang in his voice.

After an incident of street racing in the States, he is quickly shipped off to live with his father who is in the Navy in Japan.

With little introduction of this character or his father, or his new life in Japan, he's quickly thrown into the underworld of drift racing with Little Bow Wow and the street racer Han (played by Sung Kang) someone who would become a prominent member in the later movies.

And to be honest, this is the story of someone joining a gang.

I mean yeah its not as violent or manipulative as joining a gang can actually be, but think about the situation here.

Sean is a social outcast with not many prospects and very little family he can count on. Suddenly he's introduced to this whole new world where drag racing is key and they become his new family. Now they become his new family by means of him doing favors for them and I'll say it, a lot of it is illegal.

Now they cover it up pretty well in posing Han as a sort of young Mr. Miyagi. However, instead of karate, Sean is being taught how to drag race. Its odd how close this movie is to The Karate Kid.

But yeah, Sean joins a gang. It may not be the Yakuza, they may be there for him when his father isn't, but there's no doubt that he's indebted to Han and doesn't have much choice to leave until the climax of the film.

So put aside the fact that this movie kind of glorifies gangs, what else happens?

Throughout the film, there is the conflict of the love interest and how she connects to Sean's involvement with this street racing gang.

Natalie Kelley plays Neela and while all the Fast and Furious movies have had records of objectifying women, this movie really takes it to the next next level.

Every girl in this movie seems to gravitate towards the guy who can drive the car the best. There is legitimately a part where Sean competes in a race to win a girl... And she's the one who puts that challenge forth. There is legitimately a sense that whoever wins these races wins the girl like she's a piece of property. And because of this, the main female lead just seems like that, a prize. There's a little bit of development of her character and a little bit of explanation as to why she is in this gang to begin with, but despite all that, it really gets thrown out the window as she still remains the prize.

I'm really glad the later movies turned the focus away from trying to be action crime movies and just being action movies that involved crime. There is a difference, I promise.

Continuing on with the fact that this movie is basically The Karate Kid with drag racing, the villain of the movie is just like a high school bully... a high school bully who is also a member of the Yakuza.

The weird thing is, this is really kind of swept under the rug in the end as the focus was more on car racing that gangs. And in result, the villain is really forgettable. For a little bit I thought they were going to try and develop him a little bit, try and make him a little bit of a tragic figure... but then he died. Oh well, good guys win.

The last thing worth talking about when it comes to cast is Little Bow Wow.

And he's hardly worth mentioning because they really only tried to make him the Tyrese Gibson of the third movie. But instead of him actually being the stereotypical black sidekick that can be entertaining, he's just the stereotypical black character.

That's not the best way to put it, but hey if the movie is not going to try, I'm not going to try.

Little Bow Wow is barely in the movie and he's actually kind of an asshole. I never got the idea that he was really friends with Sean and I feel like they were trying to mix the two relationships from the first two movies that Paul Walker had. Brian with Dominic from the first film and Brian with Roman in 2 Fast 2 Furious. The result is not giving each relationship the credit it really deserves.

What I will say is that I did enjoy the performance of Sung Kang as Han. While it is a little bit too much like The Karate Kid, I thought he did have a cool leader edge to him and I understand the relationship between him and Sean better than the relationship Sean has with Little Bow Wow.

So if you can't tell, I'm really not a huge fan of this movie. While there were a couple moments that I did enjoy, like the relationship between Sean and Han, I think the franchise was waning pretty fast when it came to this one.

But despite the fact that I just didn't like this movie, I do have to give it a little bit of credit. It tried something different.

I'm not totally familiar with the politics and the decisions that were made that made it so Paul Walker and Vin Diesel were not the stars of the third one but I have to give the studios credit for trying to do something new with a third installment. Trying to continue a franchise with totally new characters is a hard thing to do and I'm really amazed that they did it.

Granted they didn't do it well and there's a reason Tokyo Drift is often forgotten, but the movie is trying something different so I have to give them credit for that. And from what I've heard, Han is a beloved character in the later films, so when I eventually get to those films, I promise I will let you know if that charm he had in this film continues on.

Overall, Tokyo Drift is just a miss in my book. You have characters you can't really relate to, a movie more focused on car racing that actually developing a cohesive story, wooden acting, and a really unimpressive climax.

While I do think it was interesting to see the franchise try and go a different direction, a direction that didn't really go anywhere, I think this is probably a chapter in the franchise that you can go without seeing. Just go 1, 2, and then go straight to the 4th in Fast & Furious.

But those are my thoughts on Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 and give me your requests for future movies I should review. If you follow me, you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews.

I'll leave you with this. I couldn't really find anything video-wise for this movie so I'll put something for my next review which will be Jurassic Park. Enjoy!