Sean Boswell is an outsider who attempts to define himself as a hot-headed, underdog street racer. Although racing provides a temporary escape from an unhappy home and the superficial world around him, it has also made Sean unpopular with the local authorities. To avoid jail time, Sean is sent to live with his gruff, estranged father, a career military-man stationed in Tokyo. Now officially a gaijin (outsider), Sean feels even more shut out in a land of foreign customs and codes of honor. But it doesn't take long for him to find some action when a fellow American buddy, Twinkie, introduces him to the underground world of drift racing. Sean's simple drag racing gets replaced by a rubber-burning, automotive art form with an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a heart-stopping course of hairpin turns and switchbacks. On his first time out drifting, Sean unknowingly takes on D.K., the "Drift King," a local champ with ties to the Japanese crime machine Yakuza. Sean's loss comes at a high price tag when he's forced to work off the debt under the thumb of ex-pat, Han. Han soon welcomes Sean into this family of misfits and introduces him to the real principles of drifting. But when Sean falls for D.K.'s girlfriend, Neela, an explosive series of events is set into motion, climaxing with a high stakes face off.

The title of the film ironically could be applied to almost everything about the film and the fast and the furious series of movies. The entire movie kind of drifts away from the previous films in the series which were far better and at least attempted a plot. The movie also drifts further and further from good actors or from movie goers who still care to see the latest installment in the series. Too Fast Too Furious pretty much abandoned the ideal of a plot and what drove the first movie but Tokyo Drift takes it a step further and this time they barely even attempts a pretense of having a plot, these movies are no longer about story or characters all that is left is fast cars and hot women. So it’s hardly a surprise to have the movie take place in Tokyo where they can have hot Asian women all decked out in school-girl outfits, just throw in a few cars, some racing and you get the idea of the movie. It’s like a porn makers dream and it’s obvious who their target audience was: teenage boys how else would you explain all the Japanese school girls scantingly clad in a movie that earns a Pg-13 rating. So if the reason you like the first two movies was all the cool cars, even though they spend a lot less time on the cars this time which is a shame, and all the half dressed women and a plot and a story annoys you this is definitely your kind of movie.

There was some cool things about the movie and the best of course was the drifting. If you aren’t sure drifting really is a racing style and it was cool to see them do some actual drifting in the movie. Drifting is big in Japan where the roads don’t always allow the kind of street race most movies employ and the garage race scenes were fantastic. If you have never tried drifting you might not be as annoyed as I was at how easy the main character seemed to pick it up to be able to race someone who had been doing it for years. It would be like picking up say a pool cue and playing for a few days then trying to take on the masters, its just silly and the main character never really showed that much driving skill to begin with. Maybe they liked Paul Walker’s unbelievable performance in the first two movies how he was always so inept but we were suppose to cheer for him.

If an award were to be given for the worst cameo appearance ever in a movie, Vin Diesel’s cameo in Tokyo Drift would be right up there with the rest of the nominees. It was like they were trying to remind us that at one time in the series this movie actually had actors instead of just cars and school-girl outfits. On the same note if you were to give an award for bad casting this has been one of the worst this year from Lucas Black in his mid 20’s trying to play a high schooler to Lil’ Bow Wow still trying make us forget he went by Lil once to Nathalie Kelley thrown in so the white boys would have someone to speak English to. But I digress, I doubt many seeing the movie are expecting a plot, or acting or anything tangible, so I give credit to the producers for giving the people what they want, fast cars and hot women.

Grade: C