When a franchise jumps the shark, can it ever recover?
The Story:
Troubled teenager Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) has to leave America to avoid jail time, and moves to Japan to live with his dad who is in the Navy. Sean's a leadfoot, but he's about to learn that in Japan, there's only one way to win a race... if you get my drift.
Wow, that pun was incredibly bad.
Almost as bad as this film was to crippling the franchise!
: )
So where does this film take a wrong step?
Where is Paul Walker? Hellooooo... he is the star of the franchise, right?
No, instead of undercover agents involved in car racing, risking everything for the love of a girl...
we have a teenager... if you consider a 25 year old guy a teenager... who gets in trouble over...
A girl.
You can take the Paul Walker out of the film, but not the subplot!
So Lucas Black does his best Peyton Manning impression as a hayseed from Alabama who falls for the cute girl in school who happens to be the girlfriend of a local Yakuza.
You can probably see where this is going.
If Sean can learn how to drift in time, he's going to race for his life, and maybe pull off the upset! He follows the tutelage of Han (Sung Kang) and attempts to master the ways of the drifting.
Silly gaijin.
The biggest thing this movie added to the franchise was the addition of director Justin Lin. He'd stick around to helm another few installments.
It was time for him to un-jump the very shark he helped soar across.
Oh, and if you want to see what connection this has to the rest of the franchise, you have to wait for the very end.
Or, just fast forward to the end, and then go watch # 4.
: )
Final Grade: C
Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Very low, unless the whole set gets repurchased, I think I can skip this one.
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