Movie Scene
'Fast and Furious' backfires, misfires and is just a plain drag

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (Rated PG-13 for graphic violence, profanity) One-and-One-Half Stars (Poor-to-Fair) Silly plot about an undercover cop looking for truck hijackers in a world of illicit street racing. Only the car chases and races are worthwhile. Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker. Directed by Rob Cohen. Universal Pictures, 101 minutes.

But that probably wouldn't sell many tickets, would it? Besides, since when has truth in advertising had anything to do with the movie business?

Vacant-looking Paul Walker plays Brian, a velocity junkie trying to ingratiate himself with the street-racing crew of the swaggering Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel, the Gen-X Stallone). Dominic leads a racing team of slackers who live for the nitrous-oxide-fueled rush of leaving other cars in their dust during illegal rallies on deserted streets.

"I live my life one-quarter-mile at a time," Dominic intones seriously to Brian, after Brian has won Dom's trust by helping him get away from the police.

But, of course, Brian is himself a cop. He's part of that strange movie brotherhood of undercover agents who become too friendly with the people they're trying to bust.

Unfortunately for him, his fate is in the hands of a trio of writers who are competing to see who can write the absolutely worst bit of dialogue. The competition is fierce, though the winner may be the person who crafted the line describing Dominic: "He's like gravity — his eyes pulled me to him."

Brian isn't looking for illicit street racers, however. He's the point man in a police-FBI task force trying to shut down a team of precision drivers who are hijacking trucks full of electronics equipment. And his boss is convinced that Dominic is the mastermind of the operation.

But Brian isn't so sure. Dom, after all, seems like a much nicer guy than his competitors — like that vicious Johnny Tran (Rick Yune), who has a nasty habit when angered of showing up on a motorcycle and spraying the scene with an automatic weapon. And then there's that crush Brian is developing for Dom's little sister.

The combination of cinematographer Ericson Core, editor Peter Honess and sound designers Bruce Stambler and Jay Nierenberg give the car races/chases a thunderous, visceral quality. You get a feeling for the sheer G forces involved when computer-controlled fuel-injection systems fire like booster rockets on the space shuttle.

But for every white-knuckle moment in "The Fast and the Furious," there are two more that are unintentionally hilarious. With its cliche-riddled plot and paper-thin characters, this movie blows a gasket in the first half-hour and lurches fitfully to the finish line an hour later.

Rated PG-13 for graphic violence, profanity.