Skip to main content

Winner gets… me.


The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
(2006)

(SPOILERS) Alternatively known as The Fast and the Furious Six, if you follow the chronology (on account of a key character here dying and then showing up in subsequent F&F masterpieces. Which means I ended up catching this in very nearly the correct order (I have yet to see the actual the officially monikered Fast & Furious 6. This is the only one in the series that doesn’t feature either Paul Walker or Vin Diesel (well, almost the latter; he is wooed for a cameo, prior to his triumphant return in Fast and Furious (or, Fast Three, if you will). There are those who argue this is the underappreciated peak of the disposable franchise, but that’s a bit of a leap; it’s as laden down as ever with clunky plotting, spinning wheels, macho stand-offs and raptastic montages featuring scantily clad girlies ((the latter abjectly failing to disguise the auto- and homoerotica dripping from every shiny hood and protracted bout of male bonding).


This time out, Lucas Black’s (who first found fame as a child actor, starring in the one-season wonder American Gothic) Sean is so much darned trouble to his poor mum, getting up to all sorts of mischief with his racing delinquency, that she packs him off to Tokyo to live with his Naval father (Brian Goodman). He quickly falls in with Han (Sung Kang), who has a business relationship with the nephew of a Yakuza kingpin D.K. (Brian Tee). He even finds a bit of time to romance D.K.’s girl (big mistake!) Neela (Natalie Kelly) when he’s not bromancing.


Arguably all this auto-fetishism is more age-appropriate to Black’s teenager than Vin’s 40 year old, but it makes the high school meets organised crime plotline seem more ludicrously adrenalised than any other installment in the series. This culminates in Black’s young punk standing up to uncle Shin’ichi Chiba, effortlessly persuading him to permit a race with his nephew to settle matters. I mean, as if any self-respecting gangland boss wouldn’t take him out the back and have a rusty screwdriver lodged in his ear. These are fantasy wish-fulfilment flicks, of course, and director Justin Lin knows that very well; he would go on to direct three ever-more hyperbolic sequels. But the other problem here might be that Black is too good an actor for all this nonsense. His homespun southern drawl suggests a sincerity that doesn’t really fit with all this motorised silliness.


There’s subtext spinning off every fender in this one, though. Sean is so all-American it’s not true, and he arrives in Japan ready to teach the nation a thing or two about honour; it’s just like WWII all over again! Or like Tom Cruise in Last Samurai; a land known for its codes discovers that the foreigner has even stronger core values! If anyone can show the Yakuza how things really are, it’s a teenager from the Land of the Free. With a little help from his dad (US military might goes with its citizens wherever they are in the world).


Miraculously, when Sean stands up to Uncle Yakuza, he can suddenly speak fluent Japanese! It’s amazing! The movie is careful not to give Sean a Japanese best friend, girlfriend, or mentor (they’re all expats); all the better to accentuate those national divisions! It even throws in a bit of Star Wars while it’s at it; Lucas (Luke Skywalker), sounding all the world like a farm boy, must battle the “evil empire”, and is aided in this by an Obi-Wan who teaches him how to use the force (“the drift”) before Kenobi exits stage left (yet manages to live on through a number of sequels). The only difference is old Ben didn’t pull 360s around ladies’ cars in order to convince his young padewan that he really is heterosexual, really.


Han was best pals with Vin’s Dom you see. When Sean and Dom meet, they discuss their mutual pal. It’s a conversation purportedly about models of automobile, but I think it’s quite clear what’s going on.

Sean: I didn’t know he was into American muscle.
Dom: He was when he was rolling with me.


Sean will be rolling with Dom in Fast & Furious 7. My testosterone nozzle is full to burstin’ in anticipation.

** 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…
1 comment
Read more

Well, we took a vote. Predator’s cooler, right?

The Predator (2018)
(SPOILERS) Is The Predator everything you’d want from a Shane Black movie featuring a Predator (or Yautja, or Hish-Qu-Ten, apparently)? Emphatically not. We've already had a Shane Black movie featuring a Predator – or the other way around, at least – and that was on another level. The problem – aside from the enforced reshoots, and the not-altogether-there casting, and the possibility that full-on action extravaganzas, while delivered competently, may not be his best foot forward – is that I don't think Black's really a science-fiction guy, game as he clearly was to take on the permanently beleaguered franchise. He makes The Predator very funny, quite goofy, very gory, often entertaining, but ultimately lacking a coherent sense of what it is, something you couldn't say of his three prior directorial efforts.
Post a Comment
Read more

Right! Let’s restore some bloody logic!

It Couldn't Happen Here (1987)
(SPOILERS) "I think our film is arguably better than Spiceworld" said Neil Tennant of his and Chris Lowe's much-maligned It Couldn't Happen Here, a quasi-musical, quasi-surrealist journey through the English landscape via the Pet shop Boys' "own" history as envisaged by co-writer-director Jack Bond. Of course, Spiceworld could boast the presence of the illustrious Richard E Grant, while It Couldn't Happen Here had to settle for Gareth Hunt. Is its reputation deserved? It's arguably not very successful at being a coherent film (even thematically), but I have to admit that I rather like it, ramshackle and studiously aloof though it is.
Post a Comment
Read more

I can't explain now, but I've just been murdered.

The Avengers
5.21: You Have Just Been Murdered
Slender in concept – if you're holding out for a second act twist, you'll be sorely disappointed – You Have Just Been Murdered nevertheless sustains itself far past the point one might expect thanks to shock value that doesn't wear out through repetition, a suitably sinister performance from Simon Oates (Steed in the 1971 stage adaptation of the show) and a cartoonish one from George Murcell (1.3: Square Root of Evil) as Needle, of the sort you might expect Matt Berry to spoof.
Post a Comment
Read more

Never compare me to the mayor in Jaws! Never!

Ghostbusters (2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Feig is a better director than Ivan Reitman, or at very least he’s savvy enough to gather technicians around him who make his films look good, but that hasn’t helped make his Ghostbusters remake (or reboot) a better movie than the original, and that’s even with the original not even being that great a movie in the first place.

Along which lines, I’d lay no claims to the 1984 movie being some kind of auteurist gem, but it does make some capital from the polarising forces of Aykroyd’s ultra-geekiness on the subject of spooks and Murray’s “I’m just here for the asides” irreverence. In contrast, Feig’s picture is all about treating the subject as he does any other genre, be it cop, or spy, or romcom. There’s no great affection, merely a reliably professional approach, one minded to ensure that a generous quota of gags (on-topic not required) can be pumped out via abundant improv sessions.

So there’s nothing terribly wrong with Ghostbusters, but aside from …
1 comment
Read more

Anything can happen in Little Storping. Anything at all.

The Avengers 2.22: Murdersville
Brian Clemens' witty take on village life gone bad is one of the highlights of the fifth season. Inspired by Bad Day at Black Rock, one wonders how much Murdersville's premise of unsettling impulses lurking beneath an idyllic surface were set to influence both Straw Dogs and The Wicker Mana few years later (one could also suggest it premeditates the brand of backwoods horrors soon to be found in American cinema from the likes of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper).
Post a Comment
Read more

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.
1 comment
Read more

Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…
3 comments
Read more

Bring home the mother lode, Barry.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

If Panos Cosmatos’ debut had continued with the slow-paced, tripped-out psychedelia of the first hour or so I would probably have been fully on board with it, but the decision to devolve into an ‘80s slasher flick in the final act lost me.

The director is the son of George Pan Cosmatos (he of The Cassandra Crossing and Cobra, and in name alone of Tombstone, apparently) and it appears that his inspiration was what happened to the baby boomers in the ‘80s, his parents’ generation. That element translates effectively, expressed through the extreme of having a science institute engaging in Crowley/Jack Parsons/Leary occult quests for enlightenment in the ‘60s and the survivors having become burnt out refugees or psychotics by the ‘80s. Depending upon your sensibilities, the torturously slow pace and the synth soundtrack are positives, while the cinematography managed to evoke both lurid early ‘80s cinema and ‘60s experimental fare. 

Ultimately the film takes a …
Post a Comment
Read more

I think World War II was my favourite war.

Small Soldiers (1998)
An off-peak Joe Dante movie is still one chock-a-block full of satirical nuggets and comic inspiration, far beyond the facility of most filmmakers. Small Soldiers finds him back after a six-year big screen absence, taking delirious swipes at the veneration of the military, war movies, the toy industry, conglomerates and privatised defence forces. Dante’s take is so gleefully skewed, he even has big business win! The only problem with the picture (aside from an indistinct lead, surprising from a director with a strong track record for casting juveniles) is that this is all very familiar.

Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins, and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch, in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whether the audience was on …
Post a Comment
Read more