wynraff ysbele fernlee
Margurite Vizarro
After Sean wrecks a construction site during a car race, the judge offers him a choice: Juvenile Hall, or go live with his father in Japan. So here he is in Tokyo, wearing his cute school uniform and replacing his shoes with slippers before entering a classroom where he does not read, write or understand one word of Japanese. They say you can learn through total immersion. When he sees the beautiful Neela sitting in the front row, it's clear what he'll be immersed in.
"The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" is the third of the F&F movies; it delivers all the races and crashes you could possibly desire, and a little more. After only one day in school, Sean (Lucas Black) is offered a customized street speedster, and is racing down the ramps of a parking garage against the malevolent D.K. (Brian Tee), who it turns out is Neela's boyfriend.
The racing strategy is called "drifting." It involves sliding sideways while braking and accelerating, and the races involve a lot of hairpin turns. The movie ends with a warning that professional stunt drivers were used, and we shouldn't try this ourselves. Like the stunt in "Jackass" where the guy crawls on a rope over an alligator pit with a dead chicken hanging from his underwear, it is not the sort of thing likely to tempt me.
The movie observes two ancient Hollywood conventions. (1) The actors play below their ages. Although the "students" are all said to be 17, Lucas Black is 24, and his contemporaries in the movie range between 19 and 34. Maybe that's why the girls in the movie take their pom-poms home: They need to remind us how young they are.
They are also rich. After Sean wrecks the red racer that Han (Sung Kang) has loaned him, he has access to a steady supply of expensive customized machines, maybe because Han likes him, although the movie isn't heavy on dialogue. "I have money," Han tells Sean after the first crash. "It's trust I don't have." He lets Sean work off the cost of the car by walking into a bathhouse and trying to collect a debt from a sumo wrestler. Meanwhile, in the tiny but authentic Tokyo house occupied by his father (Brian Goodman), a U.S. military officer, Sean has to listen to a movie speech so familiar it should come on rubber stamps: "This isn't a game. If you're gonna live under my roof you gotta live under my rules. Understood?"
Yeah, sure, dad. Sean is scorned in Tokyo as a gaijin, or foreigner, and that gives him something in common with Neely (Nathalie Kelley), whose Australian mother was a "hostess" in a bar and whose father was presumably Japanese, making her half-gaijin. "Why can't you find a nice Japanese girl like all the other white guys?" Han asks him. Luckily Neely speaks perfect English, as do Han and Twinkie (Bow Wow), another new friend, who can get you Michael Jordans even before Nike puts them on the market.
The racing scenes in the movie are fast, and they are furious, and there's a scene where Sean and D.K. are going to race down a twisting mountain road, and Neely stands between the two cars and starts the race, and we wonder if anyone associated with this film possibly saw "Rebel Without a Cause."
What's interesting is the way the director, Justin Lin, surrounds his gaijin with details of Japanese life, instead of simply using Tokyo as an exotic location. We meet the sumo wrestler, who will be an eye-opener for teenagers self-conscious about their weight. We see pachinko parlors, we see those little "motel rooms" the size of a large dog carrier, and we learn a little about the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) because D. K.'s uncle is the Yakuza boss Kamata (Sonny Chiba). One nice touch happens during the race on the mountain road, which the kids are able to follow because of instant streaming video on their cell phones.
Lin, still only 33, made an immediate impression with his 2002 Sundance hit "Better Luck Tomorrow," a satiric and coldly intelligent movie about rich Asian-American kids growing up in Orange County and winning Ivy League scholarships while becoming successful criminals. That movie suggested Lin had the resources to be a great director, but since then he's chosen mainstream commercial projects. Maybe he wants to establish himself before returning to more personal work. His "Annapolis" (2006) was a sometimes incomprehensible series of off-the-shelf situations (why, during the war in Iraq, make a military academy movie about boxing?).
But in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," he takes an established franchise and makes it surprisingly fresh and intriguing. The movie is not exactly "Shogun" when it comes to the subject of an American in Japan (nor, on the other hand, is it "Lost in Translation"). But it's more observant than we expect, and uses its Japanese locations to make the story about something more than fast cars. Lin is a skillful director, able to keep the story moving, although he needs one piece of advice. It was Chekhov, I believe, who said when you bring a gun onstage in the first act, it has to be fired in the third. Chekhov might also have agreed that when you bring Nathalie Kelley onstage in the first act, by the third act the hero should at least have been able to kiss her.
Tokyo Drift lacks the positive messages about family, friendship, and teamwork that run through other Fast and Furious movies -- when a key character dies, the narrative spends no time acknowledging his sacrifice. It also has toxic messages: A man's value is based on how fast he can drive. Endangering lives through reckless driving is worth the trip to the hospital if it means other people will notice you exist. Women are only attracted to power in a man and will switch partners based solely on who wins a street race. Women are objects to be traded and won by men; high school girls are hyper-sexualized.
High school kids race cars, smoke, and drink. Characters are sexist; men treat women as objects to be won, and women eagerly participate, bouncing from man to man depending on who's just won a car race. Yakuza villains deal illegal merchandise and beat up rivals.
Despite having a White male lead, Tokyo Drift stands out for casting several East Asian actors and being directed by Taiwanese American Justin Lin. It also introduces a franchise fan-favorite character, Han, who's played by Korean American Sung Kang. But other areas fall short: A Black character, played by Bow Wow, is tokenized as the funny, supportive sidekick. A fat character is bullied in slow-motion: Three high schoolers hold him down and spray paint his wobbling belly as the main character walks by without doing anything. Women are deeply objectified (a high schooler is introduced with a panty shot, and she offers herself up as the winnings for a car race). The main love interest -- played by Nathalie Kelley, who's Peruvian-Argentine Australian -- dates whoever wins a car race, having no agency of her own. Japanese women are walking stereotypes: The first one shown has tousled hair and rushes out of a White man's apartment, implying that she's a sex worker. The rest are exotified scenery, with women dressed in aughts-era "gyaru" style (but skimpier). Two women kiss at a party; rather than being a queer scene, it's clearly intended for a straight male viewer. (The main character stops in his tracks to watch them.)
Cars crash repeatedly, sometimes flipping over, leading to three teens going to the hospital (with no lasting injuries) and (spoiler alert) one key character who dies in an explosion. Characters beat each other up, leading to bruised faces, crumpled bodies, bloody mouths.
Women and high school girls are hyper-sexualized through revealing clothing, sultry dancing, and a camera that focuses more on their legs and bodies than on individual faces. One teen is introduced with a panty shot. Another teen takes off her bra (while keeping her shirt on) and throws it to start a race. Boys and men adorn their arms with multiple women. A few quick but heated kisses. Characters flirt and date. When the main character arrives at his dad's apartment in Japan, a woman with tousled hair and heavy makeup rushes out, implying that she's a sex worker.
Several uses of "s--t," "hell," and "dammit." A Japanese character calls a Black man "monkey" and makes chimp sounds. A character boasts that he's such a good salesman he "could sell a rubber to a monk."
Parents need to know that director Justin Lin's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is the third installment in the Fast & Furious franchise. It has lots of car races and crashes, including one that flips over and explodes, killing the driver (a disclaimer advising viewers not to try such tricks at home comes at the very end of the film). Teens fight until they're bruised and bloodied; yakuza gangsters make threats with guns (but there are no shootings). Women and girls are hyper-sexualized -- a high schooler is introduced with a panty shot, and women are treated like trophies to be won, often wearing revealing clothing and hanging off the arms of powerful men. High school kids smoke cigarettes and drink; the adult villain smokes a cigar. Language includes "s--t," "hell," and "dammit." In one scene, a Black character is called a "monkey" by a Japanese character who proceeds to make chimp noises. Overall, the film does stand out for being a big-budget action movie with a large cast of East Asian actors and a Taiwanese American director, but its reliance on a White male lead, sexist messages, stereotypes about Japanese women, and a fatphobic scene make Tokyo Drift difficult to consider a "win" for diversity. There's also less of an emphasis on family or teamwork than in other Fast and Furious movies. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
In THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, young Sean (Lucas Black) is in fast trouble, racing a bully in order to "win" a girl, which leads immediately to Sean's punishment: He's sent to live with his grumpy father (Brian Goodman), a Navy lifer who lays down strict rules. Sean disobeys immediately, finding a local car scene in Tokyo and a new form of driving called "drift" where the car slides along the pavement sideways. He also makes two new friends, an "Army brat"/charming super-salesman named Twinkie (Bow Wow) and a philosophical crook/playboy, Han (Sung Kang, who plays the same character in Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, a film that shares and predates the Fast and Furious universe). Encouraged to think through his choices (why does he race? why does he rebel?), Sean becomes a better racer -- and a smarter rebel. He also falls in love with a girl, Neela (Nathalie Kelley), who happens to be attached to the villain, D.K. (Brian Tee). Because D.K. is the nephew of a yakuza member, he has money and a sense of privilege, which means he's determined to take down Sean. They race repeatedly, make mean faces at each other, and compete for Neela's loyalty.
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