Charles Desrochers / Asst. Lifestyles Editor

Prepare to be disappointed when seeing Fast and Furious, even though for the series, it’s actually a decent movie.  

This fourth installment of the series brought back its core group of characters. While the trailer made it out to be another exercise in driving fast and delivering cheesy lines about how fast said driving is, Fast and Furious dropped the scantily clad women and florescent import cars halfway through for an attempt at real story with depth. 

After this point the movie turns into a Smugglers Run type film while the audience sits in their seats asking, “Where was this 45 minutes ago?” 

They are also probably saying, “Where do they get the money for all these cars they keep destroying? Their credit must be horrible.”

The flashy bright pink Japanese cars are wrecked, dirtied and ugly by the time the plot gets off and the female booties are left in the first act. This leaves us to appreciate Fast and Furious’ story of all things.  Chris Morgan, who wrote last years surprise action hit Wanted, does a fantastic job of teaching this old dog some new tricks.   

I’m not going to comment on the driving sequences because by now we’ve seen it all.

Paul Walker’s character Brian O’Connell is now an FBI agent trying to bring down a multi billion-dollar drug smuggling operation from Mexico.

We see that after five years of being on the run, Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, is in the Dominican Republic stealing gasoline and selling it on the black market. Do you get it? Diesel is stealing petrol. 

Toretto’s long time girlfriend, played by Michelle Rodriguez, is murdered in a car wreck, leading him to return to Los Angeles and investigate her death. The story finds O’Connell and Toretto looking for the same person and joining forces.  

As important as the surprise quality of the story is the fact that, since The Fast and The Furious, Paul Walker and Vin Diesel have turned into very competent actors. The only reason this movie was possible was because both seemed to have stumbled on hard times in their careers. 

Walker, and especially Diesel, look old in this movie, which I applaud. Torretto and O’Connell are played as if their characters have not only aged but have matured.  This isn’t a case of rehashing the same tired “I love NOS” characters into a cookie cutter plot. There is an implied growth that’s happened since the last we’ve seen these two. Yet we are not bludgeoned over the head with back-story. Through their performances we realize that both are tired and the past five years have weighed heavy on their souls. 

Racing ultimately has nothing to do with the story as far as the pride of winning goes, like the other three Furious movies.  What plays out is a tale of revenge that ping pongs across the Mexican border in order to bring down a drug cartel.

I’d like to point out that the way the cartels get the drugs into the US, via underground tunnels, is not as outlandish as it may seem. The evening news in southern California is constantly showing reports of underground tunnels and other inventive ways the cartels get their product into America. 

For the first time in the series the cars are a distant third to the actors and story. Now don’t get me wrong, this is just a decent movie.

The plot has plenty of holes in it but my expectations were so low it was like ordering ramen noodles and getting chicken parmesan. Sure it’s not the fanciest dish in the world but it’s much classier than the one you were expecting to get, especially if you were expecting those noodles to be sprinkled with glitter and G-strings.