The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

The third film in this franchise is superior to the second, but not as good as the first. Lucas Black takes over for Paul Walker as the face of the franchise, playing a speed-hungry teenager who basically gets deported to Tokyo after a drag-racing accident. In Tokyo, where everybody speaks English, he hooks up with a gang of fellow speed-hungry teenagers, and they all drive around like crazy assholes. The “drift” in the title refers to the way a car can glide on its side in a semi-controlled manner while going really fast; Black’s character must learn to do this in order to master drag racing in parking garages. (As I recall, Owen Wilson’s race car also learned how to do this in Cars.) The film starts fast but gets hokey around the midpoint, and it’s horrible by its finish. A big cameo at the film’s end can’t save the film from itself, but that cameo is pretty cool.