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2 Fast 2 Furious; Hot Cars, Hot Movie

7K views 14 replies 6 participants last post by  Stacy94PGT 
#1 ·
By John Anderson
Newsday Staff Writer

Hot cars. Hot babes. Gorgeous heroes. Gruesome villains. Drag racing. Defiance of gravity. Hemi engines. Homoerotic content.

Crime. Punishment. Honor. Sex.
Ignition. Combustion. Compression. Exhaust.

“2Fast 2Furious” has everything you want — especially if what you want is “2Fast 2Furious.” There isn’t much left to think about, actually, in the wide wide world of Summer Movies, of which “2F 2F” is like, par excellence: Brainless but funny, action-packed but not without a minor moral conflict; a road movie from shoulder to shoulder and a vehicle on which John Singleton’s directing career is perched like a too-prominently protruding hood ornament.

Director Rob Cohen’s 2001 summer hit “The Fast and the Furious” was a motor movie whose title appropriated a certain literary/cinematic panache (see “The Beautiful and Damned,” “The Naked and the Dead,” “The Bold and the Brave"). “2F 2F” is more to the point. Picking up where its predecessor left off — with disgraced L.A. detective Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) having let bad guy Vin Diesel walk away to make “XXX” and “A Man Apart”— it opens with predictable vehicular/aeronautical style: a street race in a Miami that seems to be about twice the length of LeMans and ends in a blissfully stupid space-launch off a highway drawbridge that ought to end in death, destruction and smoldering wreckage, but is really just the appetizer for a smorgasbord of motorized mayhem.

Do not try any of this in your ‘87 Ford Taurus.

Singleton doesn’t horse around. He knows what we want. The mise-en- scene, as it were, is a Brueghelian banquet of exposed midriffs, bulging biceps, bursting bras and engorged veins; hard-shell-glorious super cars, their tachometers screaming for relief, smoking up the interstate highway system or dissolving into scrap. O’Conner, not just a fugitive cop but a driver of world-class nerve and reflexes, is given a choice: Face about 150 counts of recklessness and resisting arrest, or help the federal authorities — personified by the humorless Agent Markham (James Remar) — bring in Carter Verone (Cole Hauser), a money-laundering drug dealer whose undercover agent girlfriend, Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes), may or may not be in bed with Verone but certainly has a thing with O’Conner.

This is all crime thriller boilerplate; even the characters can’t seem to take it seriously, but they are, after all, accessories. This situation is not helped by the fact that singer-actor Tyrese, who plays O’Conner’s childhood friend and ex-con Roman Pearce, is so funny. In fact, with Walker such an unbelievable stiff, Mendes providing little more than decor and Hauser almost animatronic, it’s Tyrese who contributes the only human element worth paying attention to. Even Tyrese, however, has a tough time competing with the cars.

They include: the Nissan Skyline GTR, Mitsubishi EVO VII, 1970 Hemi Dodge Challenger, 1969 Yenko Camaro, 1998 BMW M3, 2003 Dodge Viper, Chevy Corvette, 1994 Toyota Supra, 1994 Mazda RX7, 2001 Honda S2000 and 1993 Acura NSX. Just in case you’re shopping.

What’s kind of surprising about Singleton’s direction of “2Fast 2Furious” is the all-but-romantic dynamic between the Walker and Tyrese characters. Are these guys in love? We’re not complaining, mind you, just surprised that in a film that rides on car hoods, asphalt and the rhythmic sway of Mendes’ hips, you’d find such a rainbow of interpersonal dynamics. It’s heartening to see such an array of disparate sentiments brought together under the “2F 2F” nimbus of carbon monoxide, lacquer, wax, grease slicks and rubber, even if the great mass of its audience will be unaware of it. “2F 2F” is not just mindless summer escapism, it seems. It’s the popcorn flick as lube job.

This story was originally posted on June 6, 2003, on NYnewsday.com, one of 150 online affiliates of cars.com.
 

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#3 ·
Yeah, I'm going to wait for the DVD or cable. Just as I did for the last one. So far most are saying it's better the the first one.
 
#5 ·
Saw the ad on TV for it, trashed a 2000 Mustang Cobra R, bad start in my books. Besides, its full of FULLY SCHICK RICE MOBILES MOITE (tm).

:bash:
 
#7 ·
LunaticSVT said:
actually it was on 02 saleen if i am not mistaken
Must have a look next time i see the ad.

:1read:
 
#9 ·
Will do.
 
#10 ·
Huh, I thought it was a Cobra R as well. Guess I need some glasses.
 
#15 ·
Now, now, now folks, we all know this is a import "rice" flick. I'm just waiting to see who in Hollywood will come out with a domestic verse's import movie.
 
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