Third time's a charm? (Tagline of the week courtesy of Tokyo Drift)

Apparently, this New Yorker, is quite out of the "loop" --she didn't even know that the Fast and the Furious franchise was approaching trilogy status, until about fifteen minutes ago. Yes, you read correctly, TFATF's third installment is being realeased this summer, titled: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The trailer for this unstoppable string of sequals, was just posed on the Apple Trailers site, a few days ago, and I confess after watching it a couple times, I feel a bit flummoxed.

See, I never saw the original TFATF, because, well, it didn't grabbed my interest. By the time the sequal, 2 Fast, 2 Furious rolled around, I refused to see it out of principle. Rarely does a film title come along that invites ridicule upon itself so openly. There was many a joke traded that summer among my circle of friends about who was 2 fast and furious for their own good. Though I never saw the film, I saw the trailer for it many a time, and thankfully the image of Ludacris yelling "FIRE 'EM UP!!" whilst a comb lay resting in his luxurious afro will probably remain in my memory for all of eternity.

But now this? A third one? I can barely believe it myself. And yet...and yet, I can't help but feel that if ever there was a chapter in the TFATF epic that I would actually see, this would be it. There are a variety of reasons for this I'll admit, among them the fact that I'm a huge summer movie enthusiast. There is that slight, slim possiblity that this could be an ejoyable and well done action movie right? Well, I know, most likely, not. But still I'll gladly pretend that I have optimism for the film if it'll cover up the truth that this looks my kind of a guilty pleasure. I like cars, I like Tokyo, and I like Lucas Black. So really, when its framed that way, it's sort of a no brainer for me. And at the very least between the hyper neon urban landscape and the outrageous Tokyo youth fashion, the exotic locale should add a refreshingly stylish element to the film. I'm also immensely amused by the driving anomaly referenced in the film's title, which seems to entail, car's "drifting" or hovering sideways, and lining up with the road horizontally. It's absurd, and I'm hoping it plays a LARGE role in the plot.

Realistically speaking, this film will probably be pretty bad --and not bad in a Basic Instinct 2 kind of way, more like bad in a Tomb Raider 2 sort of way. Still, I'm curious to see what all the fuss over this franchise is about.

Besides, you have to love the tagline....

"Speed needs no translation."

Classic.