As bizarre as it sounds, The Fast and the Furious films seem to get better with time, each improving upon the last. Part of this success comes from how each film learns from its predecessor. The producers have finally cast off the borderline ludicrous undercover cop storyline in favour of telling a tale about kids who are basically good—except for their need to drive so fast it’s illegal.
Much like the adventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Bad News Bears, the action in part three moves to Japan, giving us the classic trope of an American struggling to assimilate into a foreign culture for the millionth time. But I knew this film was going to be different when I saw one of its stars in an interview saying it was the first movie about drifting. I thought, Well, now I have to see it.
Tokyo Drift discards nearly everything from the first two films except for the concept of street racing—plus a neat little cameo at the end that made me grin. We start in an average American high school, where an average American kid named Shawn (Lucas Black) is going about his day. He’s challenged to a race by the local pigheaded jock, played by Zachery Ty Bryan. It’s not the most inspired start, and ten minutes in, I was beginning to wonder if Bryan ever gets tired of being typecast as a pigheaded jock.
But then something unexpected happened. When the race between Shawn and the jock goes down, it ends in a horrifying smash-up. Of course, everyone walks away okay, but the movie actually shows very real consequences—both personal and financial—of illegal street racing. Shawn is apparently some kind of renegade, getting run out of town everywhere he and his mother go because of his Speed Racer ways. So, he’s given a choice: cool his heels in juvie or catch the next plane to Tokyo to live with his father.
Obviously, Shawn chooses the latter and heads off to the Land of the Rising Sun. He moves in with his father and takes up residence in what could loosely be described as a closet. At his new high school, he befriends fellow expat and small-time hustler Twinkie (Bow Wow), who introduces him to the Tokyo racing scene. There, Shawn starts crushing on Neela (Nathalie Kelley), who, unfortunately for him, is the girlfriend of D.K. (Brian Tee), whose uncle happens to be a kingpin in the Japanese mob.
Shawn, being the genius that he is, accepts a challenge to race D.K. However, his unfamiliarity with Japan’s high-speed, hairpin-turn racing style—known as drifting—leaves him humiliated and in debt to D.K.’s rival, Han (Sung Kang). What starts as fun quickly spirals into something more dangerous as internal rivalries escalate from friendly competition to life-and-death stakes.
That’s another thing I liked about this film—the stakes feel real. We’re not dealing with Paul Walker’s renegade cop Brian, who somehow manages to be completely clueless yet always two steps ahead of the villains. These kids seem genuine. When they’re in over their heads, they are really in over their heads. Rooting for them feels a little like The Simpsons’ Judge Schneider: They’re basically good kids, and I guess boys will be boys…
Another positive change, as I said before, is that the characters are forced to face real consequences. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t One to Grow On, but Shawn has to learn responsibility. He realizes that his actions don’t just affect him—they have serious repercussions for others as well.
Although I initially laughed at the idea that drifting was going to revolutionize car chases, I have to admit, the film won me over. There’s a kind of grace to the chase scenes thanks to the drifting sequences. We also get several great moments of Shawn training, struggling to master the technique before he can take on the master himself—a welcome addition to the typical Fast and Furious formula.
The characters themselves weren’t particularly inspired—mostly typical teen movie stereotypes. Tee’s D.K. felt a little too reminiscent of Rick Yune’s Johnny Tran from the original Furious. However, Kang’s Han, Shawn’s drifting Yoda, was a cool, laid-back, almost comical presence. The legendary Sonny Chiba was also an inspired choice for the Japanese mob boss.
In my video review of the first two Furious films, I made a point of saying that these movies aren’t high art, but they do accomplish what they set out to do—deliver pure entertainment. Director Justin Lin may slip in some next-level subtext between car chases, but he never forgets why people are here in the first place.
Of course, if you stop for a moment to think about the details, your eyes will bulge, and you’ll feel a slight migraine in your temporal lobe. Questions like: Why does everyone in Japan speak English, even among themselves? Where do all these cars come from? Why is there no gridlock in a city of 36 million? I thought Japanese schools gave a lot of homework—where do they find time to race? If Shawn’s dad is in the military, why isn’t he living in base housing? And so on. You get the picture.
