Tokyo Drifters
In 2006, director Justin Lin made The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. I remember the ads; I remember thinking, "Tokyo Drift?" What does that mean?
It sounded like the title of a video game; appropriate, considering the gaming vibe I get when I look at the visuals in these films, of which Drift is the third. Except at the end, there's no connection to the other two films, but then we get a sense of the international scope of street racing in this film saga.
Tokyo Drift deals mostly with a young southern American kicked out of high school. He has to go to Tokyo to live with his father after his mother decides to pass him on to her divorced husband. Lucas Black is Sean Boswell, street racer come to Japan where he gets in, against his father's wishes, with the in-crowd of drift racers. Drifting is when these little cars swing out with their rear tires on turns they can take very adeptly and swiftly.
Sean wants to learn how to drift. Han, a rich boy with several cars, teaches him. Han is killed in a fiery crash. His racing adversary, now Sean's, is D.K. (meaning Drift King, played by Brian Tee). D.K. is a sullen young man with an uncle in the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Sean, after Han's death, excels at drifting, faces D.K. in a climactic race. As in the previous two films, the race scenes are replete with beautiful cars and car groupies, but in this film, the feminine ornamentation is Japanese and equally hot.
All this surface sheen is what I now expect in the franchise, but Tokyo Drift is a pretty well made film with some quiet dramatic moments, unlike 2 Fast 2 Furious. When we see the pressures put on D.K. from his organized crime connection he becomes more sympathetic, so there is some character development now and then.
Netflix released the first three films of the franchise just recently. If they put out more, I'll watch and review them in the spirit of watching and writing about anything from high art to simple entertainment.
Vic Neptune
In 2006, director Justin Lin made The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. I remember the ads; I remember thinking, "Tokyo Drift?" What does that mean?
It sounded like the title of a video game; appropriate, considering the gaming vibe I get when I look at the visuals in these films, of which Drift is the third. Except at the end, there's no connection to the other two films, but then we get a sense of the international scope of street racing in this film saga.
Tokyo Drift deals mostly with a young southern American kicked out of high school. He has to go to Tokyo to live with his father after his mother decides to pass him on to her divorced husband. Lucas Black is Sean Boswell, street racer come to Japan where he gets in, against his father's wishes, with the in-crowd of drift racers. Drifting is when these little cars swing out with their rear tires on turns they can take very adeptly and swiftly.
Sean wants to learn how to drift. Han, a rich boy with several cars, teaches him. Han is killed in a fiery crash. His racing adversary, now Sean's, is D.K. (meaning Drift King, played by Brian Tee). D.K. is a sullen young man with an uncle in the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Sean, after Han's death, excels at drifting, faces D.K. in a climactic race. As in the previous two films, the race scenes are replete with beautiful cars and car groupies, but in this film, the feminine ornamentation is Japanese and equally hot.
All this surface sheen is what I now expect in the franchise, but Tokyo Drift is a pretty well made film with some quiet dramatic moments, unlike 2 Fast 2 Furious. When we see the pressures put on D.K. from his organized crime connection he becomes more sympathetic, so there is some character development now and then.
Netflix released the first three films of the franchise just recently. If they put out more, I'll watch and review them in the spirit of watching and writing about anything from high art to simple entertainment.
Vic Neptune
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