A time for change is upon us. As some of you may know, Dread Central has split from The Horror Channel and gone independent. The new DREAD CENTRAL officially launched on the Fourth of July, and while some bugs are still be worked out, expect it to be as good, if not better, than it was before. This means that pretty much every link to a review or article I did for Dread Central currently linked on the Archives page, message board, and my blog will take you to a dead end. I’ll be updating the Archives page ASAP once things settle in at the new site. Pretty much all previous content – such as the 120+ reviews I’ve done for Dread Central - should be coming along with us, uploaded and archived in the coming days. And expect a major revamping of this site beginning with next month’s Foyeurism. Since there’s still nothing new on the film festival front, an overhaul is overdue. In the meantime, my B-WARE THE BLOG! continues to go strong so feel free to drop by for even more news, reviews, and assorted weirdness. Now strap yourself in for the July 2006 Foyeurism about a pair of guilty pleasures of mine.

GAIJIN ROADSHOW

GAIJIN - A Japanese word literally meaning "outside person", commonly translated as "foreigner." For example, an American trained as a ninja fighting other ninjas in Puerto Rico or an American street racing punk that moves to Tokyo and immediately challenges the top Japanese street racer for street racing supremacy.

AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION - the title alone sets the stage for this most righteous Golan-Globus sequel by letting everyone up front know that when they watch this movie they will in fact witness an actual confrontation. You know, a real confrontation, as opposed to all the non-confrontational ninja confrontations that took place in the first AMERICAN NINJA.

AMERICAN NINJA, ARE YOU TRYING TO SEDUCE ME?

Personally, I prefer this sequel to the original AMERICAN NINJA. I find the original a bit on the generic side. On the contrary, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION is just flat out goofy. Boasting a plot straight out of a G.I. Joe cartoon, watching the film you come to realize why it was that Cobra Commander always failed. It wasn’t because G.I. Joe was such a supreme fighting force. Hardly. It's because Cobra Commander was an idiot, plain and simple. Why Destro or Baroness or someone within COBRA with an ounce of common sense never snuffed their dimwitted leader is beyond me. The guy was dead weight regardless of how good for the morale his high-pitched squealing of the group's name may have been. Dark Helmet in SPACEBALLS declared that evil will always triumph because good is dumb. He obviously never knew Cobra Commander or any villains from your typical Golan-Globus production. In AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION, the role of Cobra Commander is replaced with a guy that calls himself The Lion. He dresses like a televangelist, talks like a used car salesman with delusions of being a James Bond villain, and generally gives off varying degrees of Cobra Commander not thinking this throughness.

"COOOOOOBRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

Years before the subject of human cloning would potentially become reality, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION dared to ask “what if”. What if a power hungry madman were to begin kidnapping our brave fighting men and use them to create the perfect ninja? That’s one hell of a “what if”. How exactly does this work? That’s a damn good question, one the movie never really tries to answer in anything even remotely resembling a plausible manner. In fact, I get the feeling the screenwriters would probably be happy if you just wouldn’t bring up the subject matter altogether. Hey, when COBRA set out to collect DNA from all of the world’s greatest leaders in order to genetically engineer Serpentor did any of you say to yourself, “Is this even scientifically possible?” When a would be supervillain in his First Communion suit tells you he plans to mass produce genetically enhanced ninja assassins by kidnapping United States Marines, locking them in parabolic chambers, and pumping them full of ninja DNA with the intention to sell off these ninja clones to aid international drug cartels, dictatorships, and other various terrorist outfits and crime syndicates, I 'm sorry but you just don’t argue scientific probability with the guy. You nod politely and wait for the appropriate moment to yell “Yo Joe!”

“Yo Joe!” comes in the form of Joe Armstrong, as played by the one and only Michael Dudikoff - "The Dude". In case you missed the original AMERICAN NINJA, here’s all you need to know about Joe Armstrong - he’s an American and a ninja, hence the title AMERICAN NINJA. Okay, it's a little more complicated than that, but then that's why they filmmakers were smart enough to include a brief flashback scene he meditates before the confrontation. The big confrontation… The confrontation that ends the movie… Yeah, that confrontation.

MICHAEL DUDIKOFF - THE ZEN OF DUDENESS

As for Michael Dudikoff, there are many phrases in the English language that could be used to describe him; “charisma machine” is not one of them. This suits Dudikoff fine when playing Joe Armstrong since he’s supposed to be a ninja and ninjas aren’t supposed to be all chatty or flashing The People’s Eyebrow at the audience. Ninjas are mask-wearing silent assassins that sneak up on people and eliminate them, or in the case of this film, come running at you from around a corner with a sword while letting out a battle cry just to make sure their potential victim knows they’re coming. That's the sort of thing that differentiates Joe Armstrong, a purebred American Ninja, from the low grade, genetically synthesized “make your own ninja” ninjas that The Lion sees as the key to his financial empire.

In a roundabout way, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION does more harm to the ninja mystique than any other ninja movie I can think of. Everywhere you look there are ninjas coming at you and every last one of them is an inept boob. What self respecting ninja would allow himself to get drug around on the ground for half a mile by a pick-up truck? Oh, sure, one could argue that his refusal to let go of the line and eventual ability to climb the rope up onto the speeding vehicle is a sign of ninja durability and determination, but did he still get the job done? Hell no! Only thing that ninja got was blown up. The people driving the truck had the forthright to bail. Stupid ninja hangs on all the way through the mid-air ramp flip into the gas pumps. Talk about disgracing the art of ninjitsu.

THE 1998 TEXAS DRAGGING DEATH OF SHO KOSUGI BY WHITE SURPEMACISTS REMAINS ONE OF THE DARKEST MOMENTS IN MODERN NINJADOM

It makes you wonder how The Lion managed to cover this all up. Yeah, the movie is set in Puerto Rico and, sure, the authorities are all in the Lion's back pocket, but you still have to wonder how so many dead ninjas got covered up. That's a lot of corpses to dispose of, a good number of which get off'd in full view of witnesses, far too witnesses to buy off or eliminate. You're kidnapping American soldiers and turning them into mindless ninja drones, a good number of which are getting wasted in market squares and back alleys; surely the US military are going to come knockin' sooner or later.

Actually, they wouldn't come knockin' judging by some of their decisions in the movie. But thanks to the popular US military b-movie policy known as "don't listen, don't obey", US Marines can just get fed up with being told "no" by their commanding officers and put together their own commando raids on foreign soil. Ann Coulter would be proud.

The few. The proud. The marines. The ninja marines!

You also have to wonder about the financial viability of The Lion's business practices. How much money do you think it cost him to create just one of these genetically enhanced mutant zombie ninjas? And then what does he do to impress potential buyers of his state of the art bioengineered military super weapons? Why he sacrifices an assload of them to his one legit ninja just to demonstrate how great ninjas are. How are buyers supposed to be impressed seeing what they’re expected to pay big bucks for being so easily wiped out by one of their own kind that is actually the real deal and not just a manufactured faux disposable ninja like the ones they'll be getting? How is this cost effective for The Lion’s enterprise? By the time this scene rolls around The Lion has already lost a bunch of ninjas in trying to take out Joe and now even more are going to waste for a pointless promotional demonstration. Then again, The Lion is positively rolling in ninjas. Judging by this film there was a period of time in 1987 when you couldn’t even step off a plane in Puerto Rico without bumping into a ninja.

"DO YOU THINK WE STICK OUT?" "QUIET, SOMEBODY MIGHT NOTICE US."

And again going back to the genetic engineering process that I’m not supposed to think or ask about, how the hell does this work again? He kidnaps soldiers, puts them in this incubation chamber, and begins pumping them full of primo 100% pure grade ninja genetics until they've become full fledged mindless ninja assassins ready to don the traditional ninja uniforms? I know. I know. I shouldn’t even be asking. The Lion is a businessman so the science part of his scheme falls squarely on the shoulders of the old geneticist he's holding hostage to do his bidding. They originally hooked up for a plan to better mankind through genetic engineering. That went south somewhere along the way when The Lion realized that better mankind isn't nearly as profitable as creating disposable ninja henchmen for the criminal underworld. The old man will eventually get his revenge when he suicide bombs the master laboratory along with The Lion. In retrospect, it was really a senseless death on both parts. Then again, this is a senseless movie.

It should also be mentioned that the man playing The Lion, Gary Conway, not only co-wrote the screenplay for AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION, he also co-wrote the screenplay for the Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling masterpiece, OVER THE TOP. Yes, it suddenly all begins to make sense. Conway also penned the screenplay for the dreadful Dudikoff-less AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT and it should be noted that he made his movie debut playing the title creature in the b-movie classic TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. That's quite the b-movie pedigree right there. And the villain in AMERICAN NINJA 3 is named Cobra. See, it all comes around full circle.

Speaking of b-movie pedigrees, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION 2 was directed by Sam Firstenberg, the man that had previously given the world both NINJA III: THE DOMINATION and BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Truly a great, great man. He also would go on to make the CYBORG COP films so perhaps he isn't that great.

But back to the movie, in between bar fights with the local riff raff and random acts of ninjitsu, one will also find romance afoot. The inklings of a romance begin to develop between Joe Ninja - forget Armstrong, as far as I'm concerned his name should be Joe Ninja - and the frizzy haired daughter of the old kidnapped genetic scientist being forced to do The Lion’s dirty bidding. Joe's a ninja not a Jedi so it's okay for him to get his freak on once in a while. Besides, he's a freaking Marine. He's earned that piece of ass by protecting ours. I did qualify that by saying "inklings" since their romance never seems to go past the point of shared looks and hand holding. On the other side of the coin, there’s also romance developing between a local babe and Armstrong’s best bud Curtis Jackson (the late great Steve James), but the film doesn’t need to focus on that much because it’s already a well established fact that the only thing Curtis Jackson is better at doing with ass than kicking it is tapping it. We don’t need to waste precious time on Curtis Jackson’s love life because when Curtis Jackson sets his sights on a pretty senorita, people, it’s a done deal.

Yeah, Curtis Jackson, best friend of Joe Ninja, United States Marine, and general all around badass. He's like Carl Weathers jacked up to the next level. Joe is at his best in hand-to-hand combat or wielding a ninja sword. Curtis Jackson is a true man-at-arms. Hand-to-hand combat - he'll kick your ass. Firearms - he'll kill your ass. Gigantic knives that he reaches around his back for and magically pulls them out of thin air - you better believe you're in trouble. And God help you if you make him take his shirt off in a fight. You're screwed now, buddy!

"DON'T MAKE ME TAKE MY SHIRT OFF. YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN MY SHIRT'S OFF."

Speaking of reaching behind one's back and magically pulling a weapon out of your ass, Joe Ninja's rival ninja, Tojo Ken (I only know this from IMDB and not from the movie), dishonors ninjitsu when he pulls a shotgun on Joe during their final battle. For shame! Even more shameful, Tojo Ken still fails to get the job done. He's as lousy with a sword as he is with a shotgun, and that's why he will prove no match for an American Ninja. What a pathetic upper tier henchninja this guy proved to be. He gets his ass handed to him by Joe in swordfight, pulls a shotgun and still can't get the job done, loses once and for all in another swordfight, and, worst of all, spent 2/3rds of the film waltzing around in a Sears suit that made him look more like a lower level henchman from an episode of Miami Vice. If The Lion was a poor man's wannabe Cobra Commander, then Tojo Ken is Voltar. I dare not soil the good names of Destro, Firefly, or Stormshadow by comparing him to them.

That saddest aspect of watching a film like AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION is the realization that making a movie like this today and make it as genuinely entertaining would be nearly impossible because it would have too slick Hollywood production values, fancy MTV editing, and a variety of other bells and whistles that have take some of the fun out of the low rent action cheesiness of a film like this. Current generations of action movie fans are being weaned on XXX and other assorted megamillion dollar Jerry Bruckheimer-style explodo-fests. The look and feel of a movie like this is something of a lost art - a halfway point between made-for-television and big budget Hollywood; almost unheard of today as Hollywood’s b-movies have a-movie budgets and production values and the rest generally looks very made-for-television or with the advent of digital camera, like someone’s home movie.

THE ULTIMATE NINJA MAGIC: ABILITY TO LIGHT YOUR OWN FARTS WITH YOUR MIND

Then again, maybe there's hope after all. Sometimes a movie comes along that's slick production values, MTV editing, and all the other assorted bells and whistles cannot take away from a film's overwhelming cheese factor. Case in point, FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT. Now I'll come right out and say that I had not seen either of the the two previous FAST & THE FURIOUS movies. I had zero interest in seeing either of those two films for the very things I just ranted about in the previous paragraph. However, there was just something about seeing the trailer for this third installment in the pointless franchise that is FAST & THE FURIOUS that beckoned to me. Damned if I knew why, but by "Spidey Sense of Schlock" tingled uncontrollably everytime I saw the film advertised. How could FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT not prove to be a great motion picture once it has recieved the approval of a fifty-year old Wal-Mart cashier working at three in the morning seal of approval? Two days before I saw the film myself I was purchasing some automobile related products from a local 24-hour Wal-Mart in the dead of night. Ringing up car stuff inspired this woman to start telling me how FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT was such a great movie. That's the sort of ringing endorsement you can't get from a Roger Ebert or Jeffrey Wells. And you know what? She was right, certainly not for the same reasons she believed it to be high quality cinema, but greatness indeed. Little did I suspect that I would be walking into unquestionably the single screwiest KARATE KID knock-off ever made. Oh, none of you were aware that FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT was a KARATE KID knock-off? If truth be told, I wouldn't be surprised to know that even the screenwriters didn't consciously realize they were crafting a KARATE KID knock-off. They were. They did. Shall we compare and contrast?

KARATE KID: A young man moves across the country to Beverly Hills after his mom gets a new job and seeks a fresh start.
TOKYO DRIFT: A young man moves across the Pacific to Tokyo, Japan because his barfly mom can no longer put up with his constant run-ins with the law; the latest arrest gave him the option of either doing prison time or going to live with his alcoholic, ex-Navy father in Japan.

KARATE KID: New kid feels out of place in his new environment populated predominantly by rich kids.
TOKYO DRIFT: New kid feels only a little out of place in a foreign country; depending on the scene, he either understands a little Japanese, none at all, or can speak the language fluently.

KARATE KID: New kid makes fast friends with a token minority.
TOKYO DRIFT: New kid makes fast friends with a token minority.

KARATE KID: New kid takes an immediate liking to a pretty school girl and she responds in kind.
TOKYO DRIFT: New kid takes an immediate liking to the first Eurasian female he meets in school, who is instantly infatuated with him as well.

KARATE KID: The girl's ex-boyfriend is the local top jock and karate champ, and he does not take kindly to this new guy putting the moves on "his" girl at a beach party.
TOKYO DRIFT: She "belongs" to the local illegal street racing big shot, nephew of a Yakuza boss, also involved in his own illegal racketeering ring, and he, of course, does not like it when he notices the new guy getting friendly with his girl at a late night gathering of street racers.

KARATE KID: The new kid gets his ass whooped by the karate expert bully.
TOKYO DRIFT: The Asian bully challenges the new kid to a car race and proceeds to humiliate him with his superior drift racing skills.

KARATE KID: An old Asian sage takes the new kid under his wing and agrees to teach him karate in exchange for the kid doing a bunch of chores around his house that are actually part of his training.
TOKYO DRIFT: A young Asian loan shark takes the new kid under his wing and agrees to teach him the art of drift racing, but first the new kid will have to work off his debt by serving as a courier and collecting outstanding debts from customers that still owe the guy money.

KARATE KID: The two bond and the old Asian sage gifts the young man with a car.
TOKYO DRIFT: The young Asian loan shark gifts the young man with a car in order to complete his illegal tasks. They will eventually bond over their love for mutual love of hotrodding and thumbing their nose at authority.

KARATE KID: A misunderstanding leads to a rift between the new kid and the girl.
TOKYO DRIFT: A minor rift develops between the new kid and the girl due to her being both afraid of what her boyfriend might do to him and because she believes her entire cultural identity hangs on being accepted by a pureblood Japanese male. Being abducted at gunpoint also doesn't help matters.

KARATE KID: The new kid uses his newfound skill to defeat the bully at his own game on his own turf, gets the girl, and lives happily every after.
TOKYO DRIFT: The new kid uses his newfound skill to defeat the bully at his own game on his own turf, gets the girl, and lives happily every after.

FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT is an automotive KARATE KID knock-off as produced by Rock Star Games. Case in point:

KARATE KID: Old Asian sage goes on to co-star in three sequels in which he will continue to expound on the importance of discipline through karate.
TOKYO DRIFT: Young Asian loan shark dies in a fiery car wreck during a gun battle/car chase after embezzling from the Yakuza.

With Vin Diesel having moved on to family comedies and Paul Walker off running scared into the blue, the franchise needs a new rebel with a cause or a clue. Meet Shawn Boswell, your typical good looking American illegal car racing hoodlum - and the movie's hero. The hero of the film is a total dick and the only real reason he proves to be the film's hero is because the bad guys he keeps opposing turn out to be an even bigger dicks. He's not the hero; he's the lesser of two evils. Toss in Shawn's thick cornpone accent and our hero looks, sounds, and behaves like a guy that should be a villain on a spin-off of The O.C. set in the Ozarks (The O.Z. perhaps?).

THE CRASS & THE TOOTHLESS

How much of a dumb ass is Shawn? He will brag at one point about how the day he got his driver's license was the day he got his first speeding ticket. This strikes me as something only an idiot would brag about, sort of like bragging about that the same day you got your first gun license was also the first time you ever shot yourself in the ass.

Shawn's first act of dimwitted dickishness is an encounter with an even bigger dick in the form of a rich football jock that doesn't take to kindly to the perpetually brooding auto hunk eyeballing and getting eyeballed by his trampy blonde girlfriend. That the rich jock is played by one of the sons from Home Improvement only makes this opening sequence feel that much more absurd. The jock busts a window in Shawn's car leading to a near brawl. Shawn seemingly keeps an enormous wrench up his sleeve in case of potential fisticuffs; another little perk that only secures his thuggish nature. Wrench to skull action is avoided once it's suggested they settle things with a race for pink slips. The rich kid scoffs since he drives his wealthy father's $80,000 Dodge Viper and Shawn drives something that looks more like Al Bundy's Dodge. The jock's girlfriend then announces that instead of racing for pink slips, the winner would get her. With his girlfriend's lack of virtue on the line, the rich jock agrees.

We're off to a nearby construction site - a whole subdivision actually - for the big race. The jock is confident and determined. Shawn is, well, Shawn. The guy lives in a world of perpetual smugness. The jock's girlfriend is quite the peace of work spending the entire race playing both sides, smiling over at Shawn when the race is neck & neck and then looking over at the jock and telling him that if he really loves her then he better win. What the rich jock or his cocktease girlfriend are unaware of is that Shawn's seemingly dumpy car has the horsepower of a sports car and that Shawn himself drives like Speed Racer competing in Deathrace 2000. There should have been a counter at the bottom of the screen accumulating the number of automotive misdemeanors and felonies being committed by Shawn alone during this race.

A SCENE FROM THE NEVER AIRED WB NETWORK PILOT "THE DUKES OF 90210"

After much destruction to both their respective vehicles and community property, Shawn wins. Jock flips out and turns things into a demolition derby that ends with both vehicles involved in major high speed wrecks that completely totals their vehicles and, logically, should have killed everyone involved. Fortunately for all involved the world of the FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT sustains itself entirely on video game logic. Actions rarely have consequences and wrecks like this see both people involved walk away relatively unscathed except for cuts and bruises. This is also the last straw. Mom has had enough and the law wants him out of the country. Sayonara, Shawn.

Shawn's off to the land of the Rising Sun to live in his alcoholic, hooker frequenting, ex-Navy dad's cramped little Tokyo apartment where he'll occasionally get gawked at by the old, noodle-eating, Japanese woman in the apartment across the way. Quite the culture shock for young Shawn Boswell. Quite the culture shock for me too. I've always wanted to visit Japan and thanks to this movie I now know some things about the island nation I never knew before.

15 THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT JAPAN FROM THE FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT

1) Everyone in Tokyo that matters is under 30 and good looking.
2) All young women in Japan dress like E3 convention hookers.
3) All young women in Japan are either school girls, party girls, whores, or have little problem being considered property of their male counterparts, at least until the male pretty much tells them they are such, at which time they will then take great offense.
4) Even in Japan your best friend will be the wisecracking black guy.
5) Drift racing is the unofficial sport of kings in Japan.
6) Everyone under 30 and of legal driving age in Japan owns a customized racer with no explanation as to how they can afford to purchase, build, or upkeep such vehicles.
7) Fellow racers will not get angry if your recklessness causes you to wreck into and badly damage their parked cars.
8) If you have a fancy car and can drift then, by God, you're gonna get laid.
9) Tires are as disposable as Kleenex and just as easy to come by.
10) Sneering is not just a facial expression, it's an art form.
11) Your willingness to get into an immature dick-waving contest with the local bad boy over a girl and who's better at racing cars can be interpreted by someone watching as a sign that your are a trustworthy man of your word.
12) Apparently, the only way to get an iPod in Japan is from a street vendor that deals in imported American swag.
13) All those stereotypes regarding the Yakuza - they're true!
14) If you speed fast enough the cops in Japan won't even bother trying to catch you.
15) A high speed car chase complete with random gunfire and fatal head-on collisions with innocent motorists through the busy streets of Tokyo witnessed by hundreds of people - many of which will come within a hair's length of getting turned into roadkill - will result in the Japanese police confiscating your cars but not actively seeking to arrest any of the people involved in the incident.

Now Shawn is off to school where he'll have to put on a uniform and funny looking shoes to attend class, and his universal language translator implanted in his brain sometimes has issues, but, thankfully, most everyone in Japan that will bother to talk to him will do so in some form of English, whether it be broken English, fluent English, or in the case of his new streetwise token black friend, hip hop English.

Where would a Caucasian hick in an Asian country be without a fast-talking African American sidekick? Enter Bow Wow as Twinkie, a fast-talking African American army brat that sells imported American swag like candy bars and Nike's and loves hanging out at the all-night underground street racing gatherings. Judging by the fancy, tricked out, custom made Hulkmobile that Twinkie drives, either the military has significantly increased its pay scale or Twinkie must be selling Snickers to Japanese people on the streets of Tokyo for $1,000 a bar.

A YOUNG MAN THINKING HE'S PLAYING A SIMPLE GAME ABOUT LOCATING THE WHEREABOUTS OF ANOTHER YOUNG MAN KNOWN AS WALDO ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT MAN HE'S BEEN TRYING TO FIND IS HIMSELF AND THAT HIS LIFE IS JUST ANOTHER PAGE IN THE PICTURE BOOK WE CALL... THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

Shawn will later have to rescue Twinkie from an ass kicking by the villain's pointy haired henchfriend for selling him a defective iPod. Twinkie shows his gratitude by bitching out Shawn about how now he'll need to start giving refunds to everyone he sells a defective product to. It was at this point that it finally occurred to me that there isn't a single character in this film that isn't into some sort of shady dealings. Whether it be morally bankrupt behavior or flagrant lawbreaking, everyone's into something unscrupulous. If this movie had been made back in the 1950s when the Senate was holding hearings on the role of popular culture in the rising problem of juvenile delinquency I suspect everyone involved will have been called in to testify followed by mass hangings on the National Mall. A pity the film wasn't set in Singapore because every last one of these characters could use a good caning.

But then I really shouldn't be shocked by how screwy the film gets. After all, we are talking about a movie where Dad's #1 rule is to forbid Shawn from getting involved in any more street racing. In fact, he forbids him from ever driving a car again. After Shawn comes home from a night of racing, Dad reads him the riot act and threatens him with the possibility of being sent back to America to do prison time if he catches him doing it again. Later, Shawn and Dad will begin bonding with another - by fixing up an old car. (INSERT HAND SLAPPING FOREHEAD SOUND HERE)

Shawn's in Japan for less than 24 hours and he's already the object of affection for Neela, a cute Eurasian chick already cursed so young in life with the sort of painful looking smile that plagues so many over 40, botox'd to hell actresses. Neela is played by newcomer Nathalie Kelley. IMDB lists this film as her only credit. Considering how poor an actress she is I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that she gave at least one of the producers some great head. There's no way I'm buying this girl got the role by beating out other actresses in the audition department.

"YES, IT DOES HURT WHEN I SMILE. THANKS FOR ASKING."

Again, Shawn's only been in Japan for 24 hours and he's already macking on Neela and doing so at a parking garage that has been chosen for the evening's automotive festivities. Unfortunately for Shawn, he's also doing it right in front of the perpetually sneering D.K., the current drift king of Tokyo. That's why they call him D.K.: Drift King. If there's an Academy Award to be given out for a performance based entirely on sinister leering and arrogant sneering then actor Brian King, who plays D.K., has a lock on it. This is sneering on an epic scale.

SNEER, SPEED RACER! SNEER, SPEED RACER! SNEER, SPEED RACER, SNEEEEEER!

The relationship between D.K. and Neela is another seriously screwed up one in a film loaded with screwed up relationships. I think they used to date or are still dating. I think. It mainly appears that she's his property and she'd rather belong to him than be a nothing half-breed in a foreign land where half-breeds aren't accepted or something along those lines. I'm basing this solely on a convoluted conversation Neela and Shawn have much later in the film about her heritage. The only thing for certain about young Neela is that she clearly has lousy taste in men.

Shawn and D.K. find themselves face-to-face for a clash of egos where there only true loser will be the human race. Shawn, naturally, thinks he's the man when it comes to racing; not so much after D.K. schools him big time in a one-on-one drag through the parking garage. Shawn is used to traditional street drags and is thrown for a loop by D.K.'s masterful use of a racing technique known as drifting that essentially allows the car to round curves on an angle, practically floating on the tires. A fellow racer named Han let Shawn use his car for the race after watching the puerile face-off between the two super pricks because he wanted to see what the new kid could do. Only thing the new kid does is quite a bit of damage thanks to Shawn's inability to take a curve without slamming into something. I swear he drives like me playing any of the Grand Theft Auto games. Hand decides that Shawn owes him for his own stupidity. By owe him, Shawn now has to start doing jobs for Han, who it turns out is a local loan shark that does business with D.K., who it turns out is the nephew of a local Yakuza boss and a wannabe gangster in his own right.

Twinkie is your typical irritating sidekick type that doesn't even appreciate it when a friend saves him from a beating. Han comes across as something of a sad, apathetic individual in desperate need of a hug. Shawn strikes me as someone that could use a good smack across the face followed by some major league ear pulling from a pissed off granny to set him straight. D.K. is really just a sniveling teenager that's listened to too much hip hop and believes his own hype. And I swear Neela is a Maury Povich Show guest in the making; she seems like a sweet girl next door type until you get to know her and realize she's of the screw any guy just to get ahead type while incessently whining woe is me. Remind me again who I am supposed to be rooting for in this movie?

Shawn and Han will go on to become fast friends through their shared love of hot cars, hot babes, and blatant disregard for their fellow man, especially if that fellow man is a young Japanese gangster wannabe named D.K. Eventually, Han will tell Shawn that he knew from the moment he saw him get up in D.K.'s face that he knew Shawn was a person of great integrity and someone he could take into his fold. By handling himself like a high school punk getting riled up by an even greater high school punk, Han somehow twisted this altercation into proof in his own mind that Shawn was a man of honor? Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

You also can't make up the rooftop scene where Han attempts to wax philosophical by pointing out the huge crowd of people walking the streets below and telling Shawn how they all live their lives too scared to ever break the rules, how that's no way to go through life, and that his philosophy is to make choices and never look back on those choices with regret. I sat there in amazement. This scene plays like the film's big "moral of the story" moment but that message seems to be a ringing endorsement that it's good to be a sociopath. That's right, kids. Listen to Han. Make a bad decision, screw someone over, hurt someone physically or emotionally, break the law - just roll with the consequences and never have any regrets. It's all about you and it's all good.

In retrospect, I wonder if Han had time to look back on his choice to scam money from the Yakuza with an ounce of regret before he exploded.

UWE BOLL'S BURNOUT REVENGE: THE MOTION PICTURE

Alas, Han isn't long for this world. When your philosophy is to do whatever you feel like and to hell with the consequences, well, that's bound to come back and bite you in the ass eventually. While Shawn begins mastering the art of drift racing and continues sneaking around with Neela further pissing off D.K. and Twinkie keeps on doing what all African American sidekicks are supposed to do, Han has been scamming moolah from the Yakuza. D.K.'s uncle momentarily wipes the sneer off D.K.'s face by dressing him down for getting scammed and orders him to personally take care of the matter. By take care he meant get into a high speed chase/gun battle through the streets of Tokyo with Han and Shawn. Now that chase sequence definitely needed a counter at the bottom of the screen calculating the felonies. If this had been a Grand Theft Auto game I'm guess it was have led to at least a three star police rating. Innocent motorists are wrecked left and right, including more than one high speed head-on collision, and yet the movie couldn't give a damn about the well being of those people. After all, they're just NPGs - non-player characters. The chase culminates with Han suffering a near fatal crash followed by a fully fatal explosion.

Shawn and Neela decide to go hideout at Dad's. D.K. shows up, pulls a gun on Shawn, and demands Neela get in the car. The only reason Shawn doesn't get his head blown off then and there is because Dad pulls his own gun on D.K. His doing so actually garnered applause from the audience I saw the movie with. Clearly, this movie knows its audience, which if you think about it, is both a little scary and a little depressing. After Neela leaves with D.K., who has vowed that he will finish off Shawn when daddy isn't around, Dad tells his more trouble than he's worth son that he needs to get him out of the country. Shawn tells Dad no, that this time he has to stand up and take responsibility for the mess he's in. Dad reluctantly agrees, suddenly gets all introspective, and, in yet another moment that puts an exclamation point on the film's faulty logic and warped morality, tells his son that at least he hasn't made the same sort of mistakes in life that he did.

Say what?

So being an alcoholic that frequents hookers and skipped out on his family years ago yet is still willing to take in his juvenile delinquent son is somehow worse than being a career criminal that got tied up with another career criminal, repeatedly defied authority at every turn, committed an untold number of crimes in two different countries, and is now being targeted for death by someone with ties to the Japanese mafia? In the world of FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, yes.

Shawn gets his hands on the sack of yen that Han had embezzled and pays a personal visit to D.K.'s uncle. In the presence of both D.K. and Neela, Shawn apologizes for Han's dishonorable thievery and for both his and D.K.'s recent behavior, and suggests they settle everything once and for all in a be all, end all street race. It should be noted that the great Sonny Chiba pops up as D.K.'s Yakuza boss uncle just long enough to smoke some cigars, mangle the English language, and officially sanction a loser leaves town downhill street race.

Uh oh. The cops have paid a visit to Han's garage and confiscated all of his vehicles. They don't seek to arrest anyone involved in that violent street chase, just impound the remaining vehicles. Yeah, that's some fine police work there. Woohoo, they did leave behind one car although it is the one Shawn trashed in his initial race with D.K. Oh, if only there was some other high performance vehicle that they could get their hands on that they could use parts from the trashed racer to transform it into high precision, street racing, muscle car which they will do so during a musical interlude straight out of an 80's "teen friends working together to save to youth center" movie montage. Hey, what about that old Mustang that Shawn was helping his dad fix up? Cue music! D.K. custom built from the ground up cruiser may be fast and it may be furious, but, by God, it's not American!

And so it has all come down to a loser leaves town match fully sanctioned by the governing body of the Yakuza. A downhill race where the loser will be forced to leave Tokyo or Japan as a whole; the movie never really makes that much clear. The downhill in question is a narrow serpentine hillside street way that D.K. is the bonafide master of. Friends and onlookers are in attendance. Even the Yakuza has shown up for this grand spectacle. Gawkers at strategically placed locations along the track can watch the entire race through linked up camera phones so that nobody will miss all the racing goodness between an American and an Asian as the lock horns in an automotive battle for international asshole supremacy. It's all on the line. Whose cuisine will reign supreme?

Whose do you think?

The climactic showdown between Shawn and D.K. plays like an episode of Speed Racer meets the video game Need for Speed Underground. They clang into another constantly. They narrowly drift around tight curves. The constant threat of going off a cliff and falling hundreds of feet. The "oohs and ahs" of the spectators. D.K. snaps and tries intentionally ramming Shawn off the side. It'll instead be D.K. that takes the death plunge off the hill, a moment that garners a round of excited applause from Twinkie, Neela, and other random onlookers. It's like they took the big moment where everyone cheers as Shawn wins the race and edited it in as their reaction to seeing D.K. take a death plunge off a cliff. At this point I could no longer be shocked by any of this, not even when D.K. crawls out of wreckage seemingly unscathed. Well, not completely unscathed since Shawn wins the race, wins the mantle of Drift King of Tokyo, and forces the former D.K. to have to leave Tokyo, possibly all of Japan - they never really explain how far out of town D.K. must go. Heck, he probably just moved north and become the new Drift King of Osaka.

"ALMOST HOME. STAY TOGETHER BUTT CHEEKS. STAY TOGETHER BUTT CHEEKS."

But the movie isn't over just yet. The movie has to keep going for a few more minutes so that Vin Diesel can cameo as an old friend of Han's who shows up in Tokyo looking to challenge Shawn to a memorial street race in Han's honor. I'm not exactly sure what was discussed by the two since I was memorized by Vin Diesel's lips. Was he wearing lipstick? Why were his lips so shiny? Oh, the mysteries of the universe.

Decked out in full hip hop booty video hooker-wear, a smiling Neela, having finally accepted her lot in life to be nothing more than a handsome car racing thugs #1 squeeze toy just so long as that thug has round eyes, starts the race just in time for the movie to fade to black, but before the closing credits roll a disclaimer appears informing us that what we've seen in the film was performed by professional drivers, is extremely dangerous, and should not be attempted by anyone at home. Sure, now the movie develops a conscience. The disclaimer should have ended by saying, "It's your choice to emulate what you saw in this motion picture and you should never regret whatever choices you make regardless of the consequences. But don't even think about suing us! - Sincerely, the producers of Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift".

I made the choice to go see FAST & THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT and I do not regret it. The movie is a highly entertaining piece of cinematic crappola. I compared the movie to a video game and it is. Just like playing a Grand Theft Auto game I found myself thinking how wrong this was even as I continued to beat that dead hooker with a baseball bat.

IN MEMORY OF THE LION & HAN

BOTH WERE IMBECILES. BOTH PURSUED TERRIBLE LIFE GOALS. BOTH EXPLODED.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND