This movie starts as expected and pretty entertaining, involving some street racing, and some 17yo who obviously doesn't fit in 'Sport America' and the whole high-school thing.
I gotta say, from the first time I saw the main actor, and he going through the metal detectors, I tried to imagine he was going to an airport, then a university, even with cheerleaders, football teams and all the cliché that comes with movies presenting high schools, I thought that, because they casted a 23yo guy that looks like a 32yo, I'm still actually having trouble believing that the actor is only 23 years old.
Sean 17 years old, played by Lucas Black, age 23, but looks 32, is the average American, with a slightly heavy, bad and annoying southern accent with a cowboy style goes to Tokyo after a race ends badly, there he meets with another bunch of 17yo who also look like in their late 20's, early 30's, and all have money, cars and lots of girls, including the main one, Neela, played by Nathalie Kelley, who obviously, gets disputed by both Sean, and his comic-book 'arch-villain' D.K..
The problem with the cast was with the choice for Sean and Neela, the first for being a bad actor and all of the reasons listed above, the latter because I think they injected her with so much botox, that except her mouth moving and eyes blinking and shedding some fake tears, you don't see any kind of facial expression whatsoever, the rest of the cast was good, even the Japanese playing the badly made character, D.K..
The story gets ridiculous from the minute Sean arrives in Tokyo, after school, he meets his demographically chosen friend and goes see the 'underground world of car racing', there he sees Neela again and from the start gets entangled in a love triangle involving the yakuza bad boy D.K., so, Sean challenges him for a race, oh wait, he doesn't have a car, no problem, some guy who never saw Sean before, or even knows his name, lends his 100k car, well, Sean trashes the car during the race, and that way, hey he made a new powerful friend, Han the Zen, all he did was trash his car.
Anyway, some scenes of Sean learning how to drift happen, over and over and over and over and over again, some flirting with Neela, anyway, he end up winning a race from one of D.K.'s drivers, after that some news happen, Han is stealing from D.K., so some fighting ensues, Hans gets f-cked and then Sean decides to go talk with the Yakuza master of the region, D.K.'s uncle, he gives the uncle some money and propose some peaceful solution, a race between D.K. and Sean, nevermind that the fight was already over, Hans was dead and Sean had nothing to offer, or was any kind of threat to anyone, but hey, this is a sequel, so, 3 Fast and 3 Furious, some racing ensues with a predictable ending.
One thing that was very enjoyable in this movie, was the street racing, those scenes were made in such a professional way, that one can only wish that the rest of the crew had the same competence, also those scenes remembered me a lot of Need for Speed, specially in the initial sequence, when some shortcut is taken, doesn't really try to distant itself when it puts some of the same soundtrack, which is also the only other positive point of the movie, of course, the producers had to ruin that also, the final street racing is by far the poorest, with all the curves looking the same, in the mountains, and some cellphones videos for some street racing fans.
Any, this was a very bad movie, with a terrible story and even worst main cast, but with some decent supporting cast, good soundtrack and excellent street racing scenes, but I still don't recommend.
Rating: 3/10
