Fast & Furious (4/10)

The tagline reads, “New model, original parts”. If you search the fine prints, you might find, “Half the fun.”

This franchise was never about work. It was all about fun. Who doesn’t like cars? Boys like them, girls like them. And throw in hunky blokes and sexy chicks along with the slickest cars and hippest music, that’s a killer combination right there.

Tokyo Drift had new players and fresh faces. Though it wasn’t better than the first two, the drifting brought the fun factor. And that’s what that movie was about. Tokyo Drift had an identity. This fourth one tries to be too much and too serious; and becomes too pretentious.

First clue as to the timeline of this movie in relation to the rest of the franchise was the character Han Lue. We’ve all seen him bite the dust in Tokyo Drift so this would mean events of this movie are pre-2006, but some of the cars featured are well after its time. So, we are not supposed to take this movie seriously and yet, we are supposed to?

The best parts of the movie were in the beginning and the ending. The beginning with the 18-wheeler destruction and the ending with precision crawls through tunnels in a mountain all make for good adrenalin rush, but everything else in the middle progressed with a snail’s pace that failed to live up to its title.

Yes, that’s including the mindless car race through the streets of Los Angeles because that’s overly done and with nothing new; especially when you couldn’t tell what’s happening as the director attempted at the shaky-camera concept with close-ups on the drivers, and showing how the race was progressing on the driver’s GPS monitor and not with aerial shots! What is going on?

Shifting the gear into D for “drama” and as if the car is running on E for “emotion”, the actors were just not ready for this kind of responsibility. Diesel had no emotional depth, Walker was marginally better but not more; and for the first time the cars didn’t get any recognition, which I have to say was a dumb decision for a movie like this.

By the final act, the movie had lost itself and became too long even when it’s only running at 107 minutes. What the movie should have been: Fast and furious – ending faster and with more ferocity than the purr of a sweet Skyline GT-R.