Put it in Park
Is that a gearshift in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? (Film Review)
by Michael Sean McGowan
The Upside: If you actually wanted to know what Cars would be like with more sex and no brain.
The Downside: See above.
If The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was a car, it'd be the rusted old hotrod your neighbor keeps up on cement blocks in his front lawn. Sure, there may have been a time something in it worked, but all it is now, at best, is a mock tribute to faded glory. At worst, it's an eyesore.
I had to laugh walking out of this movie. Just a week ago I read Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman's take on the "Do Movie Critics Matter?"* debate, where some genius discovered- and you won't believe this- that media film critics are not completely in touch with the driving force of the Hollywood marketplace because, guess what, film critics are not fifteen year-olds showing up to see A Prairie Home Companion for gratuitous bouts of blood and T&A. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, though, is the kind of movie some studio executive somewhere is using to court the middle school set. I thought this was funny because I walked out of the theater behind a trio of kids (I didn't ask their ages- hey, I don't want to get arrested) who only proved that people with low standards still have standards.
"God, that sucked," one remarked.
"The story was so gay," said another. "At least the cars were cool."
At this point, I could say that my job's been done for me, but I'm getting paid by the word. Okay, not really, but I don't have anything better to do. Tokyo Drift is a tenuous follow-up to the first two Fast and Furious films, both of which were modern throwbacks to the outlaw hotrod drive-in flicks of the 1950s. I say tenuous because (save for one blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo), the only continuum between this movie and the first two are speeding cars and a hero who's considered a real bad ass because he knows where the gas pedal is. Another funny thing: listening to director Justin Lin during a making-of featurette describe having a new cast as "upping the ante," as opposed to "no one would return our calls."
Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is the typical plot element for a movie like this- James Dean-ish rebel whose acts of uprising don't extend far beyond the petting zoo-range of pretending to have a Generation Y chip on his shoulder and occasionally tearing his car through a housing construction project. It's this act that gets him booted onto a plane to Tokyo to live with his Navy officer father (Brian Goodman), I guess because someone thought sticking him in an egg carton city where he doesn't speak the language would make life less confusing. It doesn't take long before Sean runs into Twinkie (Bow Wow- now officially dropping the "little"), a fellow military-brat who specializes in spreading the American capitalist dream in the form of black market Air Jordans. Twinkie spends his time hanging with a pair of Tokyo hoods, Han (Sun Kang) and Drift King (Brian Tee), who, in turn, blow off steam by setting up "drift" racing bouts up and down the helix of a downtown parking garage ("Hey, kids, can you move your hotrods? I've got to pull out!").
Drifting is a form of close-quarters racing that involves slick wheels and hair pin turns and, as the best I can tell, is the only reason for this movie's existence. The story requires Sean to get into high speed races, including his first drift race where he totals Han's car. It is pure eye candy, and reasonably well-done (I did like the CG shots showing how close Drift King's bumper comes to scraping a wall), but none of them are enough to save the movie, nor are they enough to recommend it in spite of our better angels. To make matters even more maudlin, Tokyo Drift somehow fancies itself as the Karate Kid of the nitro-injector set- a melodramatic sap story where the Hero learns important lessons about Bravery and Responsibility through extreme sports. Sean's relationship with a school hottie (another thing- every person in this film looks foolish playing high school students) brings him and Drift King (literally) to blows. DK's a punk, but one with connections- his uncle is a member of the Yakuza, and in the only gesture of class, is sportingly played by martial arts legend Sonny Chiba.
If you can read schlock, you know where this is going. The "heartfelt" moment where Sean stands up to his father and announces that he's learned to take responsibility for his mistakes, which is then followed by the scene where Sean and DK decide to settle their differences with a winner-take-all race down a narrow, winding mountain road.
You can't expect too much from a movie like this, but there were a few things I was crossing my fingers for. This is Justin Lin's second movie after his raw and brilliant tale of Japanese-American kids falling into a life of crime, Better Luck Tomorrow (his sophomore effort, the military sudser Annapolis was the epitome of "don't ask, don't tell"). If anything, I hoped that Lin could inject even a little bit of cultural contrast into the story- what would an American racer flick look like overseas? But other than Sean's dilemma with putting on slippers before walking into a classroom, Tokyo Drift has no time for observation. Lin at least knows what people are coming for and gives them some decent races, even though all the stunt driving and CG can't break them free of the old-time cliches, like when we keep getting peeks down off the ledge of that narrow mountain road, we know someone is going to take a tumble.
I'll break soon, but there was one other thing about Tokyo Drift that struck me. My absolute favorite movie from last year was Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller's delicious pulp noir landmark, Sin City, a movie that was lambasted many for many different reasons. One was the movie's depiction of women; some calling it "demeaning" and "misogynist." No doubt that Sin City had an over-sexed aura to it, but I do kind of wonder where these critics were during the screenings of Tokyo Drift. While Sin City centered on a group of miscreants who were either fighting to protect, or avenge, a woman they love, Tokyo Drift literally has no use for them beyond scene dressing (and this includes Sean's love interest). In a very squeamish instant at the beginning, a bouncy, blonde cheerleader-ish type even offers to make herself the prize for a drag race. The women here are not only objects, they're actually lining up for the privilege. C-
*The debate I mention involves a report that says 2006 has set a record for the number of movies released without critical previews. Some have interpreted this to mean that Hollywood, while never Ebert and Roeper's best friend, is shucking off the film critic as, at best, a nuisance and, at worst, an impediment to business. And print outlets, who get their ad money from Hollywood, are nodding their heads in agreement, leading to many phasing out their film critic features. Owen Gleiberman makes his views known here (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1203175_1_0_,00.html ) and vehemently disagrees with this assessment. As for me, I think he's half-right, half-wrong. He's right that the film critic is a vital tool for a consumer industry (kind of like the Consumer Reports of the film world) and has never been a marketing tool. However, he's blind if he thinks everyone else sees it that way. It goes down to simple Darwinian math- if critics gang up on a movie, it doesn't make as much money and there will come a time where these publications that depend on precious advertising to survive are going to route out the troublemakers who put a dent in sales. If you need any more proof, look at how Variety caved in to Paramount Pictures over a scathing review of Patriot Games in 1992 by critic Joseph McBride.
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