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Fast & Furious

Directed by Justin Lin

Written by Chris Morgan

Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez

Classification: 14A

**

The best and worst thing that can be said about the original The Fast and the Furious is it was a pretty good drive-in movie that was difficult to see in the right circumstances: an outdoor theatre on a hot summer night with a cooler full of beer in the trunk.

The 2001 film hit its schoolboy audience where it lives in a terrific opening sequence that had guys in Honda Civics robbing a tractor trailer, with one coupe-driving daredevil nipping underneath the racing behemoth when traffic is reduced to a single lane.

Honda Civics! Probably half the kids who went to the movie borrowed their parents' Civics to get there. The film achieved further solidarity with fans by pairing girl-shy, hot-rod heroes with babes as fast as the guitars on its soundtrack. Those fragile, stormy relationships - Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Brian (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) - captured the essence of high-school romance. Not surprisingly, the film was a big international hit.

Subsequent remakes - 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift - mistakenly dispensed with most of the gang and were stale as movie popcorn. The new film reunites the original's couples - "New model, old parts" is its slogan - and is often as much fun as the original.

At least it knows enough not to take its heroes too seriously. This time out, Brian is an FBI guy looking to put away a Mexican drug lord whose crew took out Dom's girl. Being fast and furious, they both want revenge. Now. But they have to race through a mountain (there's a tunnel) to penetrate the drug lord's south-of-the-border lair. There are also qualifying heats: To get a job as drug mules, Brian and Dom must win L.A. street races.

And there are hazards - girls undressing them with their eyes when they enter bars, and girls making out with other girls at parties to distract them. Dom and Brian though, they don't care; they've got fast cars to race and a heinous drug lord to fry. "Are you one of those boys who prefer cars to women?" a smouldering mobster's doll asks Dom right before he slips her perfumed clutches.

You got it, sister. Brian and Dom could drive from L.A. to Mexico City and back blindfolded, but would require a GPS to find the zipper of a dress. The only time they smile here is when they are alone in a garage, tinkering with their dream cars.

That goofy innocence is what gave the original film its charm - that and a series of improbable car stunts that might have been imagined by kids playing with Hot Wheels on the blankets of their bed.

The new film isn't quite so winning. Like Brian and Dom, Fast & Furious would benefit from more female company. And Vin Diesel's mumbling sulk gets to be a drag after a while. Action heroes should be prepared to lift their tongue to the roof of their mouth when they talk.