The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: Justin Lin

If nothing else, Justin Lin's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift teaches an important lesson about race scenes: never set your climactic race between two dark-colored cars at night. There are two reasons. First, the darkness will make the race hard to follow and understand. Second, you won't be able to tell the two cars apart. But other than that, Tokyo Drift is a decent action movie. Lucas Black has all of Paul Walker's charisma and a bit more acting skill. The race scenes didn't abuse CGI like in John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) (at least as far as I could tell). Lin does a good job with not pandering to Japanese stereotypes despite the setting, although he does indulge himself a bit with the Yakuza characters. I do find it "funny" how Black immediately falls in with the only black character in Japan and falls in love with the only English-speaking gaijin. But I suppose this continues with the series' theme of reusing the same stock characters over and over again: the stoic white lead, the street-smart black sidekick, the aloof (read: "wooden") and "exotic" romantic interest involved with the villain. But with the exception of the climactic race, Tokyo Drift doesn't do anything necessarily wrong. I'm eager to see where Lin takes this series next.

6/10