Why be Fast or Furious when you can (Tokyo) Drift?
“Have you been racing, Sean? You’re outta here!”
— Major Boswell
Who’s fast? 🏃️💨
Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is an American high school student with a Southern accent. He gets sent to Japan because he was racing cars. In Japan, he races cars. He becomes friends with Twink (Bow Wow) and Han (Sung Kang), enemies with “D.K.” (Brian Tee) — “Drift King” — and will-they-won’t-they with Neela (Nathalie Kelley). Han dies. Sean races D.K. for all the marbles and wins the right to live in Tokyo and date Neela.
When is fast? 🤔
Plot-wise, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) takes place after Fast & Furious 6 (2013) and before Furious 7 (2015). You could have fooled me. I don’t recall camera flip phones and iPods being so prominent in 2014 life.
Who’s furious? 😡
There’s a wide range of tempers in Tokyo. Han is incapable of being anything but totally cool, and D.K. is just below boiling point 24/7.
- Clay vs. Sean, because Cindy (Clay’s girlfriend) likes Sean. Clay is the quarterback at the high school in [[Ａ ｒ ｉ ｚ ｏ ｎ ａ]] where the movie starts.
- D.K. vs. Sean, because Neela likes Sean and Sean likes Neela
- Major Boswell (Sean’s dad) vs. Sean. The major is washed up and living alone until Sean is shipped to him. He demands that Sean live by his rules if he’s going to live under his roof. Rule number one is no racing, so Sean moves out. Really, Sean’s dad resents that Sean still has his whole life ahead of him. They reconcile in act three by building a car together.
- People on IMDb who spot continuity errors in the races of Fast & Furious films:
During the first race between the Monte Carlo and Viper, the starter pulls off her bra and throws it in the air. It lands about 10 feet in front of the two cars. Both drivers shift gears, accelerate for a few seconds, then drive past the bra, which is now 100 to 200 feet from where it landed.
How fast? 🏎⏲️
- Not very at the start. The first three minutes of the movie are in slow motion. It’s really important that you see every nook and cranny of that public high school — Go Ducks! — since it has no bearing on anything 10 minutes later.
- The establishing shots of Tokyo are much quicker.
- Han says that if you go faster than 180 kph (112 mph), the cops in Tokyo will not pursue you because they have no chance of catching you. (Their cars are slow, which also means they are men of low character.)
- In that scene where Han is explaining Tokyo traffic laws, Sean hits 197 kmh (122 mph).
How furious? 🌡️
- Clay, although he is quarterback of the football team, gets so mad at Sean having a conversation with Cindy, Clay’s girlfriend, that he throws a baseball through the window of Sean’s car. I’m not an athlete, but I reckon you have to be quite angry when you choose to wield the tools of another sport to express your anger — or when you comment on IMDb.
In the beginning of the movie, when the baseball is thrown at Sean’s car, it goes past him and lands on the passenger floorboard. In the next shot, the ball falls to the ground, with glass landing behind the rear tire, as if the ball had been thrown from inside the car.
- During the opening credits, some kids at the high school spray paint a fat kid’s belly purple against his will. Sean witnesses this and does nothing. Go Ducks!
- D.K. wins for most furious. Clay is pissed off, but he’s in only seven minutes of the movie. D.K. wears a scowl from when we first meet him in the parking garage until the climax, when he flips his car off that mountain and disappoints his yakuza uncle.
- The theme song isn’t furious, it’s fire. My Gen Z readers will recognize it from TikTok memes. Enjoy this fine collection:
What I learned today
1. I ought to eat Snickers, drink Rockstar, wear Air Jordans and buy an iPod.
2. Drifting is a way of life. It’s about living in the moment, about being present. It’s the space right between past and future where everything else just disappears. Drifting is neither fast nor furious. Drifting is.
3. Don’t sleep on NOS. It was back in this one! It wasn’t mentioned by name, but there was a clear shot of a NOS tank with this logo:
Standout quotes with no context
- “Japanese food is like the Army — don’t ask, don’t tell.”
- “I’m so good, man. I could sell rubbers to a monk!”
- “Why can’t you go find a nice Japanese girl like the rest of the white guys around here?”
- “What do I look like, a zebra?”
- “You didn’t just play with fire. You soaked the matches in gasoline.”
