This video was shot last summer at Willow Springs International Raceway. Too bad there’s music instead of the sound of the Nelson Racing Engines twin-turbo, but still, it’s pretty cool. More details on the shoot at BangShift.com

Paul Walker just confirmed in a radio interview that he and Vin Diesel are set to star in the fifth The Fast and the Furious, which will be set in Brazil. The fourth installment brought in over $75 million in the first weekend, so this isn’t really a huge surprise. The Brazil location should be interesting. Via Jalopnik

I’ve had a long history with the development of Fast and Furious (FF4). I just got a chance to see the movie on Friday night for the first time in its entirety. Being behind the scenes for the filming gave me a lot of perspective on what I thought the movie might look like or how it might progress. Of course most of my assumptions I thought of ended up being false. I think that is perhaps always the case with movies if you’re on the inside; The end result is a bit of a mystery that gets worked out in the editing room after everyone else packs their bags and moves on. You can really only hope for the best and then let it go.

Regardless of what I thought would or would not happen, the movie is a huge hit and I’m very glad! The F&F franchise needed a hit to keep it going and this movie delivered huge box office numbers. That is what was needed to keep the franchise moving forward and I’m excited about part 5! Continue reading at The Real JDM

On Friday night, the wait was finally over. I had my large bag of Sour Patch Kids and I was ready for the two hours of non-stop motor mayhem that is Fast and Furious.

The lights dimmed and the scene opened with Dom and Letty chasing down this massive tanker convoy, ready to jump aboard and hijack its lucrative cargo. How do they do that? Through outlandish acrobatics and cryogenic technology–what did you expect? The ensuing series of events during the heist borders on insanity as Dom proceeds to drive 55 mph in reverse–in a Grand National–and pull off an improbably timed power brake that enables him to escape by diving under a flaming tanker barrel-rolling down the highway toward him. Yep, Fast and Furious is up to the same old tricks that made the first installment every car nut’s love-to-hate movie in the first place.

I so badly wanted to like this movie, but I’m sorry to say that I saw it for what it was: a sub-par attempt to rekindle a dying franchise. I’m not going to totally rag on this movie, though–there were some definite pros. Follow the jump for my full review.

The first and most important pro was, surprisingly, the plot. Dom’s vengeance on behalf of a murdered loved one is the driving force of the story, and keeps you interested and rooting for him to get the bad guy right from the beginning. Add in the predictable yet necessary plot twist towards the end, and you’ve got an action movie with at least some degree of depth to it. In a sense the movie gives you two villans and two heroes: Brian O’Connor struggles to make things right by going after Campos, a drug lord who has eluded FBI capture–while Dom goes after the killer who works for Campos. Paul Walker’s performance is leaps and bounds better than his doltish Brian O’Connor of the first movie, where he came off as a cardboard “Keanu Reeves, Surf Detective” cutout. His reprised role is much more believable, and as the movie rolls on you can see he’s much more credibly torn between his serve-and-protect cop persona and his true, crime-loving gearhead self. Dom’s character, in turn, seems to have grown a more believable sensitive side–he’s a guy whose tastes have changed from tricked-out imports to big nasty American muscle, and he’s ready to stop running from the law to save his friends and family. A movie like this is exactly the thing to play to Vin Diesel’s potential as an action performer, and it kind of makes you wonder why his career was never able to get any real traction.

Anyway, the writing and the character portrayals were decent, and quite a bit more subtle than expected. But I can tell you what sucked about the movie in three simple words: Computer Generated Imagery.

As a big fan of movies like Bullitt, Smokey and the Bandit, and Vanishing Point, I know it’s possible to make an exciting chase scene without the help of computers. Fast and Furious, however, thought that in order to go bigger and badder with its action, it had to go digital and unrealistic. Couple that with over-editing of the live action chase scenes, and you can hardly tell what’s happening. The best chase by far is the main race through city streets, held as a kind of audition to gain membership in Campos’ organization. It was exciting, fast-paced, and all real. The worst chase scene has to be at the end where Dom, Brian, and several bad guys are in the mineshaft-like tunnel on the US-Mexico border. The entire chase from beginning to end was seemingly CGI intercut with a few in-car shots. Yes, I understand that there isn’t some web of tunnels someplace where you can conveniently race cars for filming, but they could have made do with above-ground built sets. The over-computerized action seemed to detract from the charm of the first movie, which was much more based in real cars racing other real cars.
My other problem with the movie was its abandonment of what made it popular in the first place: Imports. Boy was I ever surprised to find myself missing them! But remember that import and tuner cars didn’t have a movie to call their own until The Fast and The Furious, and this latest sequel left them on the sidelines to watch. The movie even makes a bit point of having one of the characters say to Brian, “Muscle beats import every time!” It kind of felt like a slap in the face to the hordes of kids who drove to the theater in their Civics and their AE86’s to see the latest in the series that first popularized their scene, and that might’ve even been what got them into tuner culture in the first place. Out of all the cars that saw action, I counted only a handful that were imports: Brian’s GT-R (why did he need to pick three if he was only going to drive one ?), the STi they stole, and what I think was a 240sx in the main race scene (the cut editing was so fast I never got a good look at it). Most of the rest were just background cars or leaning-posts for hotties. Did I really mind that muscle cars played a bigger role? Well, not really. But muscle gets to steal the spotlight in nearly every other contemporary car movie–it seems like Fast and Furious should be the place where the import segment gets to shine.

My one remaining grievance with this movie has to be its relentless video-game marketing effort. I hope others noticed how oddly the first half of the movie played out. Note the staged missions, objectives, and even a GPS that guided characters through a video-game street course–it made you feel like a passive spectator to the video game version of the movie, as if they came up with the game first and then wrote the film script based on it. Sorry guys, that only works if you’re Resident Evil.

In closing, I think Fast and Furious fully intended to be a more faithful sequel to the first movie, and wanted to rekindle what we all fell in love with. But with stunts so over-the-top as to be completely unbelievable, over-animated chase scenes, and the mentality that more editing equals better action, it fell short of being truly satisfying as either a sequel or an action movie.

What did you think of the movie? Share your own review in the comments!

I’m going… are you going? I got tickets… you got tickets?? Let’s just say I’m a little hyped up over today’s debut of this latest installment of The Fast and the Furious. I haven’t been to a “car guy” movie since Disney/Pixar’s Cars back in 2006. Needless to say, serveral of my car-nut buddies and I are going. We’ll either wind up making fun of generic tuner lingo or being hopelessly glued to the screen shifting our sodas to the beautiful soundtrack that is a 454 big-block Chevelle. Let’s just say I’m hoping for the latter. Stay tuned for my review!

California residents who were hoping to check out opening night of Fast & Furious this Friday have been cruelly thwarted. An emergency resolution passed late yesterday has banned the film from California theaters until further notice, following a pair of street-racing-related deaths in So Cal this week. More…

Advocates of the ban have claimed that a spike in street racing activity will certainly result from the opening of the movie, as “youngsters” with nitrous on the brain take to the streets to imitate the moves they’ve seen on screen. The surge in illegal racing could last all summer, claims Bill Thompson from Stop Street Racing, as aspiring racers obtain performance parts and hop up their rides after being inspired by the latest installment in The Fast and the Furious series. “Given the problems we’ve had here,” Thompson said, “in our best-case scenario, these movies wouldn’t be shown at all.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was surprisingly supportive of the measure, despite being himself the star of films criticized for their alleged promotion of violent activities. “The street-racing problem is out of control,” the Governator was quoted as saying. “It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but we will do what we must to keep our roads and our children safe.”

In coming days, lawmakers will wrangle over the duration of the film’s postponement, and theaters will be faced with the complicated task of refunding or crediting those who purchased advance tickets. Meanwhile, Californians who are set on seeing the flick this Friday will just have to (ahem) drive really, really fast to Arizona.

When I chatted with Paul Walker at the Fast & Furious shoot last year, he struck me as a pretty serious gearhead. But at the time I never suspected he could rip up a track like this. It’s too bad they didn’t let him do any of the stunt driving for the film–(he was a little sad about that, too)–because he seems to have some pretty burly skills on him. Check out this epic drift video from Streetfire–Walker, Tanner Faust ‘n’ pals go out to play at Willow Springs raceway in a bunch of awesome rides, including  a 2010 Mustang and a whole heap of GT-Rs. Enjoy!

Check out this Fast & Furious promo our buddies at Streetfire are running. It’s got the long version of the trailer in HD–looks good!–while a pop-up quiz gives you some questions to answer while it’s running. The quiz is connected to their sweepstakes, which promises a Grand Prize trip for two and ride-along at the Texas Mile Challenge for the winner. Take a look!

Daryl over at Just Driven has some interesting low-down and spy shots of the stunt R34 Skylines built for the new Fast and Furious movie. The clean R34-bodied Kaizo that stars as Paul Walker’s ride is the only one that doesn’t get hurt. The rest of them are GTS-T mules dressed up to look like R34 Skylines on the outside. Then there’s one lucky car, Daryl says, that’s fitted with a VW buggy drivetrain and running gear, and gets jumped and run down a flight of stairs. See build pics below the jump.

It’s dark, but not too dark to tell there’s a lot of nice cars getting wrecked. Thanks to Brad Jolly for the tip on this one!