2 Fast 2 Furious

It looks like they couldn’t get Vin Diesel back for some more but the Hollywood suits decided to continue anyway with the adventures of Brian O’Conner, ex-cop.  He has to go undercover again but this time he’s coerced into it.  Either he goes to jail for letting Dom go at the end of the first one (plus numerous other crimes) or he plays ball and helps bring down a drug lord.  Unexpectedly he chooses to go to prison, it’s actually a pretty short movie.  I’m just kidding he takes the option that allows him to drive fast cars ‘n shit: work for the FBI?

Unfortunately this installment is pretty much exactly the type of film everyone thought the entire series was for so long.  Everything’s dumbed down, not very well executed and way more frat house-y than the first.  I swear every other word is “bro” or “homie”.

The script has some good ideas in it like the boat jump at the end and the tag team race where the winners get the losers’ cars.  There’s a fine foundation with going undercover (again) to get to the bad guy but it wasn’t fleshed out enough.  One of the main issues is the villain isn’t nearly menacing enough.  Maybe it was just Cole Hauser (Higher Leaning) who played it too laid back.  Or maybe the character was underwritten.  Or both.

Swapping Tyrese Gibson (music shit, Death Race (2008)) for Vin Diesel doesn’t help either.  He plays Roman Pearce who starts out as a tough guy (a la Dom Toretto) but then abandons that and gets goofier as the movie goes which is a little weird.  Rome finds his place later in the series as the smack talking yet apprehensive comedic relief and I think that’s the best use of the character.

All the racing and action sequences are a bit more outrageous than the first but not much.  They tried to amp shit up with smaller things like a drawbridge jump finale on the first race or weaving in and out of traffic at high speed.  My favorite driving sequence may have been the tag team race I mentioned earlier.  Brian and Roman know they can’t win straight up so they play kinda dirty to force the outcome in their favor.  I guess that was fun.

On a technical level this is not a very well shot or edited picture.  The driving scenes get a touch confusing at times and there were other parts that would throw in an awkward camera angle for no good reason.  Also John Singleton directed which seems real odd to me.  He did shit like Boyz n the Hood, Rosewood and Baby Boy that have explicit messages about society and black culture in particular.  So I wouldn’t think he would go for a flashy illegal street racing movie that’s intended to be mindless popcorn fun.  I dunno maybe the material really interested him, maybe he needed the money. Or both.

Before I wrap this up there are a couple of things that really annoyed the shit outta me in here.  One is all the hype talk during the racing.  All drivers constantly blurt out terrible crap like “hahaha”, “c’mon stay with me”, “yeeeeah!”, “Romy Rome, you never heard of me?” and “woooo smack that ass!”  And second are the million and a half insert shots of people shifting gears.  I don’t need to see every shift guys, it sorta waters down the excitement when you show me all of them.

The sequel stupidly exaggerates many aspects of the first film (the number of ogling chick shots, the cartoonish blurring when someone hits their NOS button, TWO undercover cops) and doesn’t add anything new to the mix.  Ok, they added Roman but that wasn’t by choice.  A lot of the time it feels cheap and B movie-ish in not the best way.  It’s amazing the series survived after that last sloppy medium shot of Brian and Roman walking towards the camera giggling like a pair of high teens.

I kinda like the title though.  It’s not 2 much if you ask me.  And it wasn’t 2 much of this series for folks ‘cause there would be more, a helluva lot more.