The Fast and the Furious Trilogy
The Fast and the Furious Trilogy is all about fast cars and street racing with a good guy bad guy twist with each movie containing the high definition film and great bonus features.
Film making 15/25
Cinematography 18/25
Audio 18/25
Bonus Features 20/25
Total 71/100
The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift Blu-ray edition in one pack is street racing at its finest. All three movies star some top cars and some good acting but the first was by far the best with Tokyo Drift coming in second and 2 Fast 2 Furious coming in a late third.
All three movies are pretty good with plenty of fast street racing action but story is a bit short for the first and last film. The second film 2 Fast 2 Furious seemed like it was trying to capitalize on the first films popularity and did continue with Paul Walker.
The Fast and the Furious stars Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriquez with plenty of old muscle car mixed with shiny and fast newer cars. Vin Diesel plays Dominic Toretto who is the head of a small gang of street racers with a younger sister to protect.
Paul Walker plays as Brian O’Conner, an undercover police officer trying to find out who is behind truck hi-jacking’s that are plaguing the area. A group of Hinda Civics accost semi drivers while they are delivering consumer goods and steal the truck and its contents.
While Brian is working at infiltrating at least one of the local race gangs rival gangs are also looking to get ahead themselves in their various illegal endeavors. Brian looks at a couple of gangs but concentrates his efforts on Toretto as he is attracted to Toretto’s sister.
When Brian becomes somewhat of a friend of Toretto he ends up letting him go in the end when Toretto’s friend is killed in a drive by shooting from a rival gang. The film ends with Dominic going free after Dominic’s car crashes and Brian gives him his car, saying Brian owes Dominic a car from the first race he lost against Dominic.
The Fast and the Furious is a pretty good movie and has some good racing action with a bit of a twist for an ending with the bad guy going free but it did fall a little short on story. They made the movie with more attention paid to the street racing and fast cars so less emphasis was on the movie’s storyline.
The Fast and the Furious has plenty of extras including a making of feature, commentary with director Rob Cohen, deleted scenes and some new features. The new features are a new look at Dominic’s charger, a street race feature looking back at racing from Henry Ford winning a race for capitol to start his company and continuing with the history of racing.
The Fast and The Furious Blu-ray also includes a digital copy of the film for your computer along with the other great features. The movie is pretty good with plenty of great features that add up to a lot even if the movie is not a fantastic one.
2 Fast 2 Furious is a sequel to the first film but unfortunately does not have Vin Diesel, Paul Walker continues in the second film as Brian O’Connor. Brian is out of the police business after letting Dominic go in the first film and is now living in Miami making ends meet by street racing for cash.
When he is arrested by police after a street race they offer him a deal, come back to the force to work on a case and his record will be clean. He accepts and gets a job for an import exporter who already has a mole in his operation with Monica Fuentes, played by Eva Mendes.
Monica is using her position as Carter Verone’s lover to infiltrate his drug business; Verone is the import exporter who the police and customs agents are after. When Brian and ex-con Roman Pearce played by Tyrese Gibson are tasked with going undercover and infiltrating the drug business run by Verone they work as drivers for money laundering.
Throughout the film both Brian and Roman make deliveries for Verone using some fancy race cars and eventually take out the bad guy after Verone discovers who they and Monica really are. The film involves a lot of street racing and crazy car chases including the finale where Brian drives his car onto the fleeing boat with Verone and Monica onboard.
2 Fast 2 Furious lacked any really good story and did not hold the satisfaction of the first film as it played too much on the tired old drug runner bad guy and good cop routine. The cars and racing were pretty good but the film over all lacked any real tie in from the cop story to the racing so it seemed to be thrown together to make the film about racing.
2 Fast 2 Furious has a lot of extras just like the first film with some new bonus features, a digital copy and other features that were on the original release DVD and the Blu-ray edition. The additional features include commentary by director John Singleton, deleted scenes and outtakes, scenes from the actors learning to drive and much more.
The extra features include plenty of making of features and a lot of fun looks at the actors as they work on the set and prepare for the film by learning to drive Fast and Furious style. All three films are about racing and the actors needed to learn how to drive as they do in the films so they could make the movies more believable.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is about drifting or sliding cars around corners and does not include the police aspects of the first two films. Sean Boswell, played by Lucas Black, gets into more trouble with the law and ends up going to live with his father who serves in the military in Japan.
Sean ends up conflicting right off the bat with Takashi, the nephew of a large mob boss who dislikes him just because he’s American. Han, a business partner of Takashi helps Sean when he tries to race against Takashi but does poorly and crashes Han’s car several times because he does not understand how to drift.
Han lent Sean his car so he could race Takashi and now Sean owes Han for the car’s damages so Sean starts to work for Han as a delivery man. Han also teaches Sean how to race and drift so he can beat Takashi at the end of the film because Han is stealing money from his partner which means he is also stealing from the uncle.
Sean tries to make amends with the uncle by giving him the money that Han stole and offers to settle with the nephew in a race. The uncle approves of the race and in the end lets Sean go free when he beats the nephew when they race down a mountain side with a series of switchback roads that is a popular racing spot for Takashi.
Tokyo Drift is a pretty good movie with a bit too much racing and drifting but it does have its good spots with a decent story but a bit much on the macho stuff, especially toward women in the film. Sean likes a girl named Neela but Takashi claims she is his and this causes an instant hatred between the two, simple girl ownership that is kind of lame and outdated.
The film has a lot of great racing with a heavy influence on drifting which is simply sliding all over the place as opposed to keeping the car straight. The driving is very impressive but they must have gone through hundreds of tires with all the rubber they left on the sets and streets.
Tokyo Drift includes the digital copy as the other two films do with a lot of extra features as well including commentary, driving school for the actors and plenty making of features. The bonus content includes some new stuff just like the others that were done just for the new release and the upcoming film release of Fast & Furious that is due out in April of 2009.
The bonus features of all three films make the Blu-ray Trilogy well worth the cost if you do not own them already and really add a lot to the films even if they are not great movies. All three films add up to a great street race trilogy and are pretty good films together but the best is the first film by far.
The Fast and The Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift are now in a trilogy set on Blu-ray and really make for a great high definition package.