Jordana Brewster and Paul Walker in "The Fast and the Furious."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, David gives this film a: Stars: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel Director: Rob Cohen Rated: PG-13, with sensuality and some language Length: 105 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By David Lee
Democrat and Chronicle

(June 22, 2001) -- Someone has made a light, unabashedly fun car-chase movie about a far-fetched scheme to steal valuable Asian goods. That movie is The Italian Job, and it came out in 1969.

Its mutant twin might be The Fast and the Furious, a flick about street racers who make a living stealing a certain Asian brand of DVD players. Despite the high-octane title, the movie's audience might leave feeling languid and indifferent.

Kevin Costner look-alike Paul Walker plays Brian, an undercover cop who infiltrates a team (they're too wholesome to call themselves a gang) of diehard car fanatics with too much time on their hands.

Led by a mean-looking fellow named Dominic (the aptly named Vin Diesel), the crew soups up Hondas with fancy fuel injectors and cans of nitrous oxide propellant -- the stuff in laughing gas and whippets -- to race opponents (who are always darker-skinned, by the way) and maybe even rob an occasional truck full of electronics.

Like Keanu Reeves' character in Point Break (which features surfer bank robbers instead of errant drag racers), Brian must decide whether his loyalties lie with fellow bluecoats or whether he'll become a turncoat instead.

But as far as obstructors of interstate commerce go, Dominic is pretty lame. He's more like a painfully hip CEO than a hard-boiled thug, preferring to host company barbecues over, say, shooting at rivals. And as far as car-themed movies go, The Fast and the Furious is in serious need of a jump start.

By the time the anticlimactic and drawn-out final race rolls around, the audience might no longer care what happens to Brian or Dominic. After the closing credits, a short scene tells us exactly what happens to Dominic, but it's hardly worth sticking around for.

The movie's casual reliance on racial stereotypes, its poor screenplay and its third-rate acting are almost forgivable, since The Fast and the Furious doesn't exactly bill itself as high art. But it should, at the very least, deliver a few memorable chases.

But instead of following cars as they zip around town or pursue each other on curvy roads, we usually see shifting gears and angry drivers. When we do see actual chases, the skillful but uninspired camera work makes us feel like we're watching from the bleachers instead of riding along.

Worst of all, the cars usually race along straight and deserted roads -- leaving almost no room for suspense. Maybe street racers don't exactly zing around in rush-hour traffic, but the least director Rob Cohen could have done is throw in a decent (that is, longer than two minutes) scene where a slew of cops pursues an errant Civic.

What Cohen gives us is this year's answer to Gone in 60 Seconds -- a car movie that clearly doesn't fire on all cylinders. It just left me wanting to coast home in my low-performance Ford Escort station wagon.