Oh, Sonny Chiba, you’re so much better than this. The third instalment of the engine fetishist’s favourite franchise improbably manages to relocate the action abroad. Lucas Black – once the handy little actor in American Gothic and Slingblade – plays the meatheaded hero who dreams endlessly of car races, or to use parlance suited to the intellectual capacities of the characters here, he thinks, ‘vroom, vroom, go now’ a lot. When another himbo challenges him to a race, madness and destruction of private property ensue and Lucas is packed off to his dad’s place in Tokyo to attend what appears to be the world’s oldest high school.
Unable to speak the language, Lucas’ academic career seems doomed, but among students who look like they’ll be needing botox any day now, he stumbles into a thrilling nocturnal subculture of drift-racing and within seconds forms a rivalry against the local drift king (Tee). You can figure the rest out. Or maybe not. Like, why are the streets of Tokyo empty save one pelican crossing? Why does everyone speak perfect American-accented English? What the hell is rapper Bow Wow doing at a Japanese school?
To be fair, director Justin Lin does a mean car-chase and makes terrific use of gaudy J-pop. Sadly, whenever the film slows down to include frivolities like dialogue, things are neither fast nor furious, but duller than a factory car manual.
And the women! Playing like an extended, particularly misogynistic rap video, girls offer themselves as prizes or stand around in skirts that don’t quite cover their thongs.
Not the loveliest three-quel, but certainly the most booty-ful.