The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
THE one thing to state about The Fast & The Furious franchise is that it has little to do with quality and everything to do with high-speed thrills.
Hence, the prospect of The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift is not such a bad prospect if viewed as a chance to kick back and enjoy some adrenaline-fuelled thrills that amount to nothing more than Friday night popcorn fun.
The original Fast & The Furious did, of course, make stars of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. The former only made it through one movie, leaving Walker to take the reigns for the sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Neither Diesel or Walker are back for the third outing, which switches country to Japan and examines one of that country’s growing underground phenomenons – drift racing.
Lucas Black stars as Sean Boswell, an outsider who attempts to define himself as a hot-headed, underdog street racer on the streets of Tokyo after being sent there to live with his gruff, estranged father in a bid to escape the local authorities.
Officially dubbed a gaijin (outsider), Sean feels even more shut out in a land of foreign customs and codes of honor.
But a fellow American buddy, Twinkie (Bow Wow), introduces him to the underground world of drift racing and Sean quickly rises to the challenge – replacing simple drag racing with a rubber-burning, automotive art form that combines an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a heart-stopping course of hairpin turns and switchbacks.
On his first time out drifting, Sean unknowingly takes on D.K., the “Drift King,” a local champ with ties to the Japanese crime machine Yakuza.
Sean’s loss comes at a high price tag when he’s forced to work off the debt under the thumb of ex-pat, Han (Kang).
But Han soon welcomes Sean into this family of misfits and introduces him to the real principles of drifting.
But when Sean falls for D.K.‘s girlfriend, Neela (newcomer Kelley), an explosive series of events is set into motion, climaxing with an ultimate high stakes face off.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is directed by Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow, Annapolis) and written by Chris Morgan (Cellular). It is produced by franchise creator, Neal H. Moritz (xXx, SWAT).
Commenting on what attracted him to the project, director Lin told Entertainment Weekly: “At first, I was like: ‘You’re basing a whole movie on this underground scene?’ But we found drifting so cinematic – I wanted to bring a sense of awe to this type of action.’‘
The film is due to be released in UK cinemas on June 16.