Third 'Furious' sequel a collision of spectacular car races, inert acting
The one reason I liked Justin Lin's "Fast & Furious" has nothing to do with the dialogue - a laughable mess of cool-guy chatter and silly philosophizing - or its pulse-pounding race sequences featuring super-slick cars popping through 60 kajillion gears.
No, I liked it strictly because Lin has finally directed an action movie where somebody has the sense to shoot the tires on the bad guys' cars instead of firing bullets at the drivers and constantly missing them.
Granted, having a hero who shoots out car tires doesn't make for a good movie, and believe me, "Fast & Furious" isn't one. But it's good enough for thrill-seeking filmgoers with a high threshold for dumbness and for main stars with the emotional convictions of a speedometer.
Lin's "Fast & Furious" marks a family reunion of sorts. Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez are together for the first time since starring in 2001's original release, Rob Cohen's "The Fast and the Furious."
In fact, this new movie feels more like a direct sequel to the original film than its two successors: John Singleton's "2 Fast 2 Furious" (with only Walker returning) and Justin Lin's "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" (with an all-new main cast).
This latest "Fast & Furious" begins with the ambitious outlaw Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his hottie partner Letty (Rodriguez) leading a visceral, high-speed hijacking of a tanker trunk as it chugs up a mountain.
Meanwhile, FBI agent Brian O'Conner (Walker, still one of Hollywood's blandest slices of white bread) chases a suspect in a frantic foot race where he tries to imitate Jason Bourne better than James Bond did in "Quantum of Solace." O'Conner fails.
When the lovely Letty winds up murdered - curiously, we never see the actual crime, just a conjured version of it through Toretto's incredibly accurate imagination - O'Conner and Toretto put aside past differences to capture those persons responsible for her death.
They finger a Mexican drug lord named Arturo Brago as the likely culprit, although they can only get to his right-arm henchman, a sleazy guy named Campos (John Ortiz).
Meanwhile, O'Conner and Toretto's sister Mia (Brewster) rekindle their 2001 romance with all the passion of interlocking transmission gears.
She wonders if O'Conner is really the good guy he claims to be. "Maybe you're a bad guy pretending to be a good guy!" she says. "Did you ever think of that?"
But O'Connor isn't much of a thinker.
"The thing I most learned from Dom is that nothing really matters unless you have a code," O'Conner says.
"What's your code?" Mia asks.
"I'm working on it."
What? Does that mean nothing matters to him? Or that screenwriter Chris Morgan likes cute dialogue that sounds revealing, but is merely confusing?
When he's not bashing bad guys or ripping up asphalt in a vintage Dodge Charger, Diesel resembles a mumbling tree trunk. He doesn't act so much as pose during his infrequent non-violent moments. If he's not posing next to oil wells (a recurring image), he's posing next to the grave of the late Letty.
As its title suggests, "Fast & Furious" plies us with plenty of squealing tires, busting glass, twisted metal and big explosions. Plus, the cars come equipped with ornately colored GPS systems that provide this movie with a video-game sheen perfect for appealing to the "Gone in Sixty Seconds" crowd who supported that disappointing 2000 Nicolas Cage movie.
Like the horrible "Last House on the Left" remake, Lin's sequel punches all the right buttons to get a bloodthirsty audience to clap and cheer for avenging executions.
Yet, the most lethal element in "Fast & Furious" could be Toretto's hilarious conversations with women, such as the slinky Gisele (Gal Gadot), one of Campos' companions. She wants to know if Toretto prefers cars to women.
"I'm the kind of boy who appreciates a fine body, no matter what the make!" Toretto says.
That's just as deadly as shooting out car tires.
<p class="factboxheadblack">"Fast & Furious"</p> <p class="News">1½ stars</p> <p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster</p> <p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Justin Lin</p> <p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for drug references, language, sexual situations, violence. 107 minutes.</p>