Fast and Furious: Not completely spastic

Vin Diesel is a hardcode motherfucker.  Just wanted to get that out of the way.  He’s not an amazing actor, but he has one hell of a screen presence.  If Vin Diesel ever had to tackle an emotionally complex role I doubt I could handle it, but in his Fast & Furious role he is absolutely spot on as the good-bad-guy.  The same goes for Paul Walker, as much as his character irritates me, he portrays it well.  But what about the actual movie?

When I heard about this sequel I was very careful not to go getting excited about it.  I’ve seen both 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift so I know how bad they were.  I had seen the trailer and I was aware that the original cast was back and understood that it was intended as a rebirth of sorts.  This got me enthusiastic but I could just picture all the ways the new movie could go wrong.

Thankfully, it didn’t.  The new Fast & Furious is an excellent, pedal-to-the-metal action flick that does well to maintain a serious note underneath all the action.  While the story did seem a little overdone and flowed a little too quickly to be satisfying, it was still better by a long shot than the horrible movie I had feared.

One of the things that hit me straight away was the brutality in the film.  All of the stunts were filmed incredibly well to really make you feel every crunch, punch, hit and even the near misses.

If you were a fan of the first movie, and maybe even the second, you should definitely see this as soon as you can.  If you were a fan of Tokyo Drift, you should shoot yourself to avoid ever tarnishing this movie with your presence.