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It seemed only right to cap our Fast & Furious franchise retrospective off with a special, extensive review for the latest entry and how I feel it fits into the series. There will be mild spoilers but nothing earth-shaking will be revealed.
It's video game day here at LITM towers, as we look at a bunch of scores from the world of computers and consoles (and one TV theme)...
It's the Soundtrek Review Round-Up TV edition!
Another trio of soundtrack spatterings from Lakeshore Records...
I have covered a lot of my thoughts on the Fast & Furious series during this Franchise Retrospective. I am a massive fan of these movies, even when I can clearly see that most of them are not good movies. I would go so far as to call the original movie, the Troll 2 of the action genre, it's a movie so bad that it borders on brilliant. Highly quotable, audacious, wrongheaded in most of the key areas; it's not a good movie but it is an absolute fucking blast.
The gang's all here again, with the triumphant return (read: cap in hand and suitably ashamed) of original franchise stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, and they are bringing back a few other familiar faces. Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster and even Sung Kang from Tokyo Drift make appearances. Justin Lin, director of the superior third installment, also returns to helm the picture.
The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift is unique in the series, in that it involves no original cast members, or any undercover operations with the police. It still involves street racing and organized crime but, at this stage in the franchise, its placement is an anomaly. In fact, save for the coda sequence with the Vin Diesel cameo, you could chop the "Fast And The Furious" prefix and just have a badass little movie called Tokyo Drift. It stands alone far better than any of the previous movies.
Vin Diesel parted ways with the Fast & Furious franchise in 2002, when he hitched his wagon to xXx as his , which he would go on to abandon, successfully dodging yet another sequel until he went on to make The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004. Never let it be said that Vin Diesel knows what is best for Vin Diesel.
Paul Walker, however, knows full well what is best for Paul Walker and that opportunities for reliable work will not come freely to a man of his modest abilities, so he returned to the Fast & Furious franchise without hesitation. He is, in essence, a less ambitious Keanu Reeves and that is just fine with me.
