3 Fast 3 Furious: Tokyo Drift
As a fan of Sega’s classic Outrun series I was looking for precisely one thing in this movie: Cars going sideways. However, there is actually a bit, though not a lot, more to the move than just power slides.
The movie takes the adolescent wankfest undertones from from the first two and rolls with it. Our Hero, Sean, initially gets into trouble after a fracas at school escaltes into a race against Zach Ty Bryan who looked exactly the same as he did in Home Improvements, over Zach’s girlfriend (the not very school-girl’ish, but most definitely raceable over Nikki Griffin), who offers herself as the prize. Actually, just typing that doesn’t quite qualify how ridiculous it came across in the film, but anyway. Sean gets busted, and as a last chance is sent to live with his dad in Japan, where he almost instantly gets involved in the world of drift racing, after he entertainingly wrecks someone else’s car in a race by bashing it in to just about every wall and pillar in a car park as his opponent gracefully drifts his way through the levels.
From this point on everyone in the film is a) a drift racer b) in posession of one or more awesome looking cars and c) surrounded by gaggles of hot japanese girls in short skirts. Literally ALL THE TIME. Some plot sort of happens, it peripherally involves Sonny Chiba being a gangster, and lots of cars go sideways. Other than Sonny, Kang Sung stands out, with a much better performance than the film deserved as the street racer/non-specific illegal activities person that takes Sean under his wing, and the soundtrack rocks, with slices of chunky japanese hip hop and pop rock thrown in amongst the usual bangers. Even Bow-Wow does OK.
I’m not exactly a petrol head, and would have trouble identifying the cars (though, Veilside, Rays, Nissan, and VW do particularly well from the placement perspective) but Tokyo Drift is exactly what you think it’ll be, and it did the job for me.
Below is the trailer, though note that the “cars are lighter, tires are slick” line isn’t actually in the film.