|
The Fast
and the Furious
Tokyo Drift |
|
|
|
|
|
| . |
. |
| Starring: Lucas Black, Bow Wow, Nathalie Kelley, Sung Kang, Brian
Tee Directed by: Justin Lin |
Theatrical Release: 2006
HD DVD Release: 2006
Released by: UniversalDolby Digital
Plus 5.1
Widescreen |
This third entry in The Fast and the
Furious franchise is the worst dramatically and the best technically. How can you give
a rating to a title like this? It delivers what it promises, what I saw described in
another publication as "automobile porn." The main characters are the speedy
automobiles; the people are just necessary accessories. The plot is simple. High school
slacker Sean Boswell gets in trouble once too often for racing. To get him out of
harm’s way, he is sent to Tokyo, where he immediately falls into a crowd that races
fast cars.
| More Fast and Furious HD Cars  Automobiles and racing are
very popular with audiences, especially the younger Alpha-male crowd that spends the most
money on audio and video. Studios have been quick to notice that. We’ve already had The
Dukes of Hazzard (Warner ***), a movie which arguably is memorable only for its car
chases and good-looking women. Now along with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,
we get HD DVD versions of the first two movies in that franchise, the original The
Fast and the Furious (Universal ****) and its sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious
(Universal ***). The first movie is dramatically the best of them all. It stars Vin
Diesel and Paul Walker, who delicately balance a relationship that swings between buddy
and enemy. The HD DVD is sumptuous looking. The picture is every bit as good as the
third movie’s, and the sound is even more interesting. The surrounds are active all
the time, and the music is often panned 360 degrees. It doesn’t have "U
Control" but it does have a picture-in-picture director’s commentary and another
feature called "Enhanced Viewing," which has the viewer click on an icon and be
rewarded with a rather large picture-in-picture that shows footage from the making of the
movie.
2 Fast 2 Furious is the weakest of the three Fast
and Furious movies, but the HD DVD has the same great picture and sound as the
other films. It does not, however, have any special ‘HD only" features, although
there are a lot of SD ones.
More HD DVD cars come from Warner with the release of Grand
Prix (***). Many say this is the best race car footage ever made, and I will grant you
that it is very exciting. To get to it, however, you have to sit through insufferably long
scenes of soap opera involving the racing drivers’ relationships. To celebrate its
40th anniversary, Warner has done a dynamic transfer from the original 65mm print. Unlike The
Fast and the Furious series which was largely shot at night, most of Grand Prix
takes place in blazing sunlight. The picture is sharp and detailed with smooth colors that
give it a very movie-like appearance. The soundtrack is largely up front, with exaggerated
stereo separation. The rear channels come into play only occasionally. But heck, for a
40-year-old movie, Grand Prix looks amazing. If you love fast cars, you will have
to own it
...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
|
|
The film could have been a three-star B flick, but the
movie and HD DVD production values raise it to much more as a DVD release. First,
there is a sleek, movie-like picture that is full of well-defined bright colors. Shadows
are handled perfectly and the chrome on the cars is impressive. Dark or bright, every
scene in this transfer is downright breathtaking. The sound fully supports the picture.
These are bad-ass cars after all, so their roar is heard frequently, and some awesome
sounds emerge from the speakers. The surrounds are active almost all the time, and the
bass will challenge most audio systems. As if the cars producing it were not enough, a
hip-hop music score adds more!
This is one of the first HD DVD discs to come close to
making full use of HD’s capabilities. It includes a feature called U Control. When
activated, the viewer can choose from this menu: picture in picture, storyboards, tech
specs (which gives you the specifications of the hot rides on screen, as well as a damage
estimate of each accident), DPS (in one racing scene you can track the progress of the
cars), and production photographs. While the movie is still running, you can
simultaneously select one or more of these as video overlays. One catch: there’s a
menu of icons to the right that tells you which of the five features is available at any
given time. Usually it is just the picture-in-picture film commentary and the production
photographs. But more than one option is often available, and you can click the
director’s voice commentary in and out of the mix. And, in case you have been
wondering what those A, B, C, D buttons are on the Toshiba remote, it is partly explained
here. Pressing the A button will turn the U Control feature on and off. U Control lives up
to its name, putting you in control of the extras. You get what you want when you want it,
and without ever having to stop the movie.
In addition to the HD features, there’s a slew of SD
ones, including featurettes on various production topics, a lot on drifting, a
(forgettable) music video, and a trailer. And wait, there’s more. This is the first
dual-layer combo disc. All that I have described so far is on the HD side. Flip it and you
have the movie in SD and the SD extras. This disc might offer enough to lure new viewers
into investigating HD DVD and will surely please all the viewers that can already
view it. |
