Fast & Furious is an action-packed no-brainer

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      Starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker. Rated 14A.

      Confused about all those street-racing-criminals flicks? First came 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, then 2 Fast 2 Furious, then The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Now Fast & Furious. Drop some definite articles for faster, more furious numerals and ampersands, and it’s a no-brainer. Literally.


      Watch the trailer for Fast & Furious.

      You feel bad for all the slutty girls in Fast & Furious. One sequence around a street race in L.A.’s Koreatown teems with so many trashy chicks that it’s more like Skankytown. Some even spend time playing faux-lesbian tongue hockey in a postrace nightclub. No dice, trampy ladies. The only hot-rod action these men crave is with their cars.

      The only action any conscious audience will want from this piece of car porn is from the vehicles. The engine sounds of modified muscle and sports machines are sweet music compared to the dialogue clunkers lurching from the lips of the potato-headed Vin Diesel.

      Diesel returns as Dominic Toretto, a fugitive up to his big-rig-hijacking tricks in South America. The opening, in which a speeding oil truck is relieved of its tanks on a mountain road by Toretto’s daredevil team, which includes girlfriend-in-crime Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), is somewhat moronically entertaining.

      The plot is slo-mo, though. When Letty is murdered back in L.A., Toretto vows to annihilate the Mexican heroin dealer (John Ortiz) responsible. Undercover FBI agent Brian O’Conner (Keanu Reevesian Paul Walker) materializes on the drug lord’s heels too, and soon the unbrainy pair are strapped back into their hot wheels.Oh, Jordana Brewster also returns, thanklessly, as Torreto’s sister.

      Justin Lin (who also directed Tokyo Drift) delivers perfectly implausible car sequences featuring flipping, crashing, crunching, and burning, and there’s a briefly intriguing GPS–guidance conceit involving a manic race through tunnels crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

      But really, you just hope everyone will stay in their cars and not speak.

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