tek's rating: ½

The Fast and the Furious (PG-13)
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Caution: spoilers, I guess.

Well, I had never seen this movie or its sequel, and had little or no interest in ever doing so. However, with the third movie, Tokyo Drift coming out, I got a bit interested, what with being a Japanophile or whatever. I've heard of drifting, so... I might wanna see that picture. But first I'd want to see the first two movies. So, I happened to catch this on TV one night. It's better than I expected. Not great, but I liked it.

It starts with, like, a mac truck or whatever, being hijacked by a few cars. Then we see a guy named Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) at a diner ordering tuna fish. Because I guess he likes the waitress, Mia Torreto (Jordana Brewster). And there's another guy who likes her, Vince, who's a friend of her brother, Dominic (Vin Diesel). And they get in a fight, and Mia calls on Dom to break it up. And later there's a street race, which is rather cool. So, that's what all these people do. Illegal street racing in L.A. with majorly souped-up cars (with, like, nitrous oxide and stuff). And Brian bets his car, and then loses by a hair, so he owes the car to Dom. But then it gets shot up by some like gangsters or whatever, I dunno. They were led by Johnny Tran, and always seem to be on really fast motorcycles, though they also do some car racing I guess.

Well, there were various other characters in the movie who I should mention, like Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), I guess she was Dom's girlfriend. And there was this guy named Jesse who's like good with computers or whatever. And hopefully I'm not spoiling too much if I mention that Brian is actually an undercover cop, trying to find who's responsible for the truck hijackings. He gets closer to Dom, they start trusting each other, so... there are some interesting concerns here, friendship and betrayal and whatnot. And Brian's bosses worrying that he may be going native... Dunno what else to say. You know, just... a better story than I would have expected from a movie like this, plus cool action and hot girls. It's nothing I feel the need to ever see again... but I should say that since I watched this, there have been a bunch more movies in the series, and I still haven't gotten around to seeing anything past the first one yet....


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