RATING:

Oh, how the trendy have fallen. Eight years ago, two rising star actors—the beef-cakey Vin Diesel and the surfer dudeish Paul Walker—made a hit film about fast cars and fast women called The Fast and the Furious. A sequel followed—2 Fast 2 Furious—but this time only Walker appeared; Diesel, apparently, had bigger fish to fry (like, uh, The Chronicles of Riddick?). Then came a third iteration—The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift—but neither Diesel nor Walker condescended to appear in it.
Well, it’s 2009 and Walker (a pretty, but wooden actor who seems more suited to The CW then the big screen) and the brooding, sculpted Diesel (who has been passed over by The Rock and Jason Statham as the action hunks du jour) have seen their careers flat-line. So they’ve pretty much crawled back to their reliable franchise.
Hate to say it guys, but. . .you should've stayed under those rocks.
It’s been 6 years since we last saw the little speed demons. Dom (Vin Diesel) is still racing cars, leading his gang, and dating tough girl Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) while Walker’s Brian O’Conner is still with the FBI, trying to bring down a heroin kingpin who moves his product in and out of Mexico with, you guessed it, extremely fast cars.
Fast & Furious starts out with a great rush of adrenaline—Dom and his gang are trying to hijack a gas truck on an extremely treacherous stretch of mountain road—and pretty much goes down hill from there. There’s a huge bummer involving the death of a popular cast member. There are some embarrassing moments of bromantic male bonding between Dom and Brian—they could’ve easily called this film I Love You, Man—and some generic bits with the drug lord and his goons. Of course, there are races, but most of those are pretty lame—they had better ones in Tokyo Drift.
The biggest problem with Fast & Furious—well, besides the lousy writing and indifferent acting—is that the filmmakers treat the reunion of Dom and Brian as though it has mythic significance—a veritable reteaming of Redford and Newman. But they forgot, the actors are interchangeable, it’s the cars that sell the franchise. Which makes it all the more baffling that at one point, Brian drives around in a tricked out . . . Subaru Impreza?