Once Upon a Time in Tokyo: The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (Dir Justin Lin, 1h44m, 2006)

The thing with selecting films for a weekly film blog is the need to shine a light into the lesser known recesses of cinema; the multiplex is but one facet of cinema as a medium. As a result, popcorn fare can be under-represented here, the very place that, with increasing consistency, Tokyo, alongside the other major cities of the world, is making appearances on the big screen, providing backdrop to the latest instalments of Sonic the Hedgehog, John Wick, and Captain America. Of course, globe-hopping action franchises are ten a penny these days, even if many of them are shamelessly borrowing local colour in the footsteps of James Bond (who visited Tokyo in You Only Live Twice (1967)).

One such globe-trotting franchise is The Fast and Furious, which, since 2001's The Fast and the Furious involving petty thieves and fast cars, has slowly evolved to take in hi-tech heists and espionage, to resemble the Mission Impossible franchise with more cars. As a result, it's also been basically everywhere from Dubai to London to Edinburgh to Moscow, in increasingly outlandish escapades that, at time of writing includes a chase across Antarctica and a car going into SPACE, whilst its cast has become increasingly diverse, and has grown to include characters from across the world. With all of this, Tokyo was inevitable

Behind the wheel: Sean (Lucas Black) gets to grips with life in Tokyo, under the wing of Han (Sung Kang)

Acting as a soft-reboot for the series-its previous stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker having essentially dispensed with the series-and giving it its secret weapon in Justin Lin, Tokyo Drift wastes no time in getting down to business. Our protagonist is Sean (Lucas Black), your typical high school miscreant with a heart of gold, who's promptly packed off to his distant army office father after one too many street race lands him with a choice of this or prison. Slowly getting to grips with the culture clash, so Sean finds himself drawn to the country's car culture, and a street racing gang that moonlight in petty crime and shakedowns, headed by Han Lue (Sung Kang, the star of Lin's previous film, Better Luck Tomorrow) and Yakuza underling, Takashi (Brian Tee), the self-styled DK, or "Drift King"

With Han taking Sean under his wing, teaching him the intricacies of drifting and Japanese street racing, after Sean wrecks one of his cars, so a rivalry grows between the young American and the Drift King. At the centre of this rivalry is Neela (Nathalie Kelley), raised by Takashi's family, but attending school with Sean, which then turns ugly, and spills out into the streets of Tokyo, with Sean forced to challenge Takeshi to a street race to end the spiralling violence, leading to a taut finale in which all of his skills are put to the test on the Toge, Japan's infamous mountain roads for the right to keep racing, and living, in the capital.

On the surface, Tokyo Drift is little more than cinematic tourism; we are treated to the usual grab-bag of cinematic tropes of Japan, from the tiny bedroom that Sean has to cram himself into in his father's cluttered house, the hyper-stylised neon, the typical cultural misunderstandings, most notably where Sean enters the classroom in outdoor shoes to be scolded by the teacher, and a student body that floats between the stereotypically Japanese and the outlandish. The film's yakuza subplot is also, frankly, enjoyable daft, giving the venerable Sonny Chiba a chance to play cigar-chomping foil to Sean and Takashi, but the gangsters are otherwise equally ridiculous, more akin to the characters of the operatic Like a Dragon videogame series than flesh and blood humans.

The Fast and Furious:Tokyo Drift is an enjoyable bomb around the Japanese capital and its car culture.

For all The Fast and Furious' admirable multi-cultural "family", it's also notable that the Japanese characters are either reduced to villains, or minor supporting characters, with much of Sean's gang American in background; Sean for his part is a likeable hero, but once one gets past the surrounding conceit of an American in Tokyo getting to grips with both the cultural divide, and the car culture he is thrust into, he is essentially an audience surrogate in a way the cocksure adults of the rest of the series never have to be. He, and indeed, everyone else in the film, is upstaged by Han, who steals every scene he's in with his idiosyncratic performance, providing both a cool-headed foil to Sean's outspoken American, as well as his mentor, and a perfect rival to the Drift King, in and out of the car.

For it is the celebration of Japanese car culture that make Tokyo Drift at least respectful to the country, if not necessarily enough to escape the stereotypical depiction of it; in perhaps the best sequence of the film, cut to a track by Japanese rappers The Teriyaki Boys, where we experience Japanese car culture, from its adherents to its vehicles, to its drifting culture, which forms the battleground to the rest of the film's rivalry. It's the moment where The Fast and Furious' new-found zeal for globe-trotting met its familiar theme of family, this worldwide tribe of car aficionados, customisers, and racers. The series may have gone onto ever-more outlandish exploits, but in its Tokyo-set lap, so the franchise proved it could move beyond its American setting, in a film that celebrates the capital, as much as it enjoys racing through it.

Rating: Recommended

The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift is available on DVD and BluRay from Universal. It is available for streaming via Netflix

Next week, and indeed, next month, to the paintstaking world of stop-start animation, beginning with the bizarre world of Takehide Hori's Junk Head.