MasterChugs Theater: So very speedy and angry

Trilogy is the current theme du jour of Hollywood these past 10 years or so. Understandable: by keeping a movie series in three, you can insure that an interested audience will come back to see the sequel, you can allow sequels to be open enough for new patrons and a skilled director can usually pare down the bad from the good, thus preventing the series from needing to run over and over into obscurity.

Hit the jump and allow me to educate you on the movie series that is both fast and furious. And yes, I can sum up all four movies in one review.

The original The Fast and the Furious features what could be the first Iron John drag race. In Los Angeles, Brian, an undercover cop who looks blond and boyish enough to be an understudy for Lance Bass of ‘N Sync, and Toretto, the hulky speed demon and thief he has been trying to get the goods on, are lined up at a stoplight, eyeing each other like buzzards. Spontaneously, they agree to race to the train tracks that lie a quarter of a mile ahead. So begins our journey into watching illegal drag races and the acting abilities of Ja Rule.

Spoilers: Ja Rule isn’t a very good actor.

Subplots about vendettas between street racing gangs do little to help the thing, either. For the most part it’s stupefying silly, with tons of bad dialogue and very little in the way of character development. An example. When Dom’s team genius, Jesse, spills why he’s working for Dom instead of off somewhere designing a better mousetrap…it might have worked in the context of another film, but here it seems out of place. Oh, NOW we get some idea of what’s going on? At least it almost made sense-Vin Diesel’s character exposition that thinks it’s development is so funny, you’ll be laughing out loud.

John Singleton’s takes a turn directing the next movie, 2 Fast 2 Furious. This offers audiences solid answers to that age-old question: Exactly how does one become too fast and too furious? Apparently, doing so involves more than just having the right muscle car or, for that matter, the right muscles. This movie finds Brian kicked off the police force and street racing in Miami. He gets busted and the FBI and Customs cuts a deal whereby his record will be cleansed if he goes undercover to help them get a dirty importer/exporter. Along the way, you’ll be made privy to such secrets as the acting abilities of Ludacris and Tyrese.

Spoilers: They’re not very good actors either. The problem with 2 Fast 2 Furious isn’t just that it’s no longer running on Diesel, but that it’s well-intentioned–it wants to be about something, which is sweet, but a shame. The first film never wanted to be anything more than just a throwback to the hot rod films of the 1950s; its kitschy embrace of a forgotten subculture was part of its charm. Worse for “2 Furious,” there’s nothing about it that sets it apart from the pack. It’s just sort of there, revving its engines and racing around street corners with no place to go.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift plays like the archetypal Western. A newcomer arrives in town, upsets the locals, plays with hearts, and rides around a lot before a final “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” showdown sends him, or someone else, on their way. Of course, the movie is actually an Eastern: The frontier is Japan, the town is big enough for about 20 million, and there is plenty of horsepower, but not a mare or stallion in sight. Despite the setting, the basic principles remain unchanged. The stranger, Sean Boswell is an Alabaman High School student, sent away to live with his seafaring father in Tokyo after getting in trouble with the law back home. Happens to me all the time. It seems Sean can’t stop racing cars. Unfortunately, for unknowing parents, the wild wild East of Japan is a paradise for the boy from the west, with its underground racing culture and scantily clad sirens, and soon Sean finds himself tangled in the criminal engine of his dangerous new town.

Tokyo Drift falls under the category of movie that most like to call “car porn”. The scenes of street racing are akin to sex in a regular porn film, and like any porn film, the plot is only a means to contrive more scenes of sex. On this level, car porn enthusiasts will get everything they seek here, getting all hot and bothered gawking at all the fancy new rides and pimped-out gear, all shiny and sleek enough to give any street racing fan a proverbial erection. In other words, the “good stuff” is here, so get your tissues and lotion ready, F&F fans. However, like any porn film, the movie takes a dip in interest whenever they get back into story mode, with a clichéd plot that mixes several other genres of movie, including the outsider in a new school, the family underworld gangster bit, and the underdog upshot competing in a competition for the interest of the bad guy’s best girl. Every single piece of the non-racing puzzle is wholly lifted from other, better films, leaving little to be interested in for those that have seen similar fare dozens of times over.

In the year 2009 came the greatest movie to ever grace theaters: Fast and Furious. Yes, that’s right, you can somehow manage to eliminate articles and it still counts as a title for a movie. The film opens in South America, where fugitive Dominic Toretto, having fled the States after the events of the first movie, find his life of crime with girlfriend Letty dangerous for those around him. So Dominic flees yet again, leaving Letty to return home. Alas, home proves just as dangerous, as it’s not long before Dominic receives a phone call from his sister Mia that Letty has been murdered by the henchman of the mysterious drug lord Braga. It’s the same Braga that now-FBI agent Brian O’Conner has been pursuing for the last two years without any success. Brian catches a break when he discovers a way into Braga’s inner circle through a street race that the drug lord runs regularly in order to recruit drivers to transport his drugs into the States. This sets the stage for an uneasy reunion as Dominic returns to the States to exact revenge for Letty’s murder, while Brian finds that his job with the FBI is on shaky grounds. As Mia asks him at one point, is he really a good guy pretending to be a bad guy, or the other way around? Brian answers that he doesn’t know himself. It’s a good thing, then, that Dominic is there to help out, as the two ends up working together to bring down Braga with or without the FBI’s help. As it so happens in these movies, the bad guys are usually better at being good guys than the ones with the badge.

Fast & Furious is still no Point Break. But it’s perfectly aware of its limited dramatic mission, and sturdily directed by Tokyo Drift‘s Justin Lin with space for a global audience to talk back to the screen. And in the jammed landscape of mass-market new releases, it offers an attractive getaway route from self-importance, snark, and chatty comedies about male bonding. Here, stick shifts do the talking. Because, anything is better than Paul Walker opening his mouth.