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Poster (c) Universal Studios
There’s a reason the world is going into a decline. It’s movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious that are #1 at the box office. Now, you’re going to blame me for the downfall of the world, but I DID NOT WANT TO SEE THIS! I thought, since my friend wanted to see this, eh, why not, it may not be that bad. That was the first mistake of the night. Next was actually paying $6 to see this. Last was actually not leaving the theater five minutes into it and not seeing another movie. Even the preview for Pirates of the Caribbean was better than this movie, and I think Pirates of the Caribbean looks like a horrible movie.
I’m just as ready as anyone for summer popcorn movies, but I expect them to be entertaining and fun. I don’t mind stupid plots and undeveloped characters if I have a good time. 2 Fast 2 Furious was anything but that. Basically, it tried to be too many things: action, thriller, romance, drama, and comedy. Let me analyze them one by one.
For an action movie to be a good action movie, it needs to have many action scenes that keep you interested. Obviously, the car races are supposed to be the action, except, well, there were only about two, they didn’t keep me interested, and they had such bad camera angles I thought I was going to vomit. I couldn’t tell anything that anyone was doing because the camera was always in the wrong spot and changed so constantly I felt nauseous. They tried to be in positions to make the cars look like they were going quickly, while in fact they were probably going at about 10 MPH and being pulled. In fact, when you looked at the background, it was moving slowly. Universal, as I’ve said before, has never had good special effects, but for overhead shots of the cars, they were obviously fake.
2 Fast 2 Furious is so ridiculous, the culminating “thriller” scene is laughable. It’s impossible to believe that a car can drive onto a boat and the bad guy is taken away. It’s just so bad. Usually films have some ground in reality, while this one just lives in its own little world where the semi-bad guys always win and the bad guys always lose, no matter how impossible or stupid things become.
Romance in action movies is like going into a gun fight with a knife. It’s unusable and it’ll end up making it worse. Both main characters, Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and Roman Pearce (Tyrese), fall for Monica (Eva Mendes) (I think, my full attention couldn’t be at the screen), and the psuedo-romance that ensues is completely worthless, unnecessary, and drags out its overlong runtime. You know, some movies don’t actually have love stories in them, but I guess they were trying to open up its target audience and diversify.
I have only seen part of the first movie, but I know two things from it: it’s a good thing that Vin Diesel wasn’t in this movie, and this follow-up was going to be pretty bad. What’s so bad was how it tried to have great characters and a deep plot. The characterization of Pearce, who was new in this movie, was so shallow, but the part that we did find out about him, it’s barely there. Also, it’s supposed to seem like it could happen in real life. So nobody’s going to notice when two cars go over 100 MPH on city streets? A bad guy just happens to hire two undercover people? Puh-leeze!
Movies like this need to have good one-liners, as all good action movies do. When a few were given out, they could have been humorous, but the wooden acting by everyone made them stupid. Innuendoes could have been flowing quickly, but, nope, bad acting spoiled it. Walker, who was good in Joy Ride, quickly ruins whatever name he had for himself, while Tyrese makes a point most people need to understand: rappers do not make good actors! And speaking of rappers, it brings me to one of the only good points of the movie.
The music, when it wasn’t rap, it was kind of techno. Music like that always wins me over, and I really liked it. The one other good point of the movie was Mark Boone Junior, whom I really liked in Memento, had a small role in possible the best sequence of the movie, which wasn't very good. Boone needs to have larger roles! He's very good. Not something I can say for the entire movie, though.
Rated PG-13 for street racing, violence, language and some sensuality.
Review Date: July 3, 2003