Let's dispense right now with the trifles of plot, character, and motivation. Courtesy of screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, you've got an interracial pair of outlaw buddy-heroes obsessed with horsepower (Walker and Tyrese), a nasty Argentinian drug dealer (Cole Hauser), and a wide assortment of cops, good and bad. You've got six bags stuffed with cash. You've got South Florida, complete with bikinis and palm trees. That's all you need to know. Because these minor elements exist for only one reason -- to prop up the frantic car races and chases, spectacular crashes, and heart-stopping drawbridge leaps that are 2 Fast's real substance -- if you want to call it that. This is low-rent summer fun, exuberantly mounted, so leave your IQ in the glove compartment. Unless you're really in the mood to ponder the deeper meanings of lines like this one, delivered by a hip mechanic to a beautiful street racer: "Bring that body by the garage tonight; we'll work on that front end of yours."
Front end, nothing. The story here is about bottom line. Following the phenomenal success of The Fast and the Furious, now enjoying a second economic jolt via special-edition DVD, producer Neal H. Moritz and company mean to cash in again. The aptly named Vin Diesel and his foghorn voice have moved on to higher ground, original Fast director Rob Cohen has been replaced by Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Shaft), and the street-racing scene has been shifted from L.A. to South Florida. But this sequel assaults the senses even more relentlessly than its predecessor, and the cars are even flashier.
Along with an exotic, wildly painted array of import "tuner" models -- expensively customized Hondas, BMWs, Toyotas, and Mitsubishis -- there is an equally eye-popping fleet of American iron -- hot new Dodge Vipers, Chevrolet Corvettes, and Ford Mustangs (one of these gets crushed by an 18-wheeler) as well as a sprinkling of nostalgic Detroit muscle cars from the pre-emissions era, including a 1969 Yenko Camaro and a 1970 Hemi Dodge Challenger, that figure prominently in Singleton's climactic chase scene. Suffice it to say that this extravaganza deploys many, many vehicles -- not just a fireworks-style finale of 200 or so custom racers but helicopters, SUVs, white police cars, yachts, and, unless my eyes deceived me amid all the mayhem, a Winnebago driven pokily along the interstate by a pair of 80-year-olds who were clearly in the wrong movie. When, more than three decades ago, Steve McQueen first hurled his dark-green Mustang over the crest of a San Francisco hill in Bullitt, he could scarcely have imagined what havoc he would wreak. Car-centric movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious are, if not the logical conclusion of McQueen's and director Peter Yates' handiwork, then its inevitable metastasis. Singleton's own résumé could now aptly include the entry Noyz Nder the Hood.
Every last delightedly reckless, nerve-smashing, hormone-crazed moment of this unbridled summer fun, jumped up by ear-splitting music tracks by such as UGK, Big Reese, Trick Daddy, and K'Jon, is bound to enthrall the vast armies of teenagers and emotionally underdeveloped 20-somethings at whom the movie is aimed. Who feels like arguing with their tastes? But count on one thing: When the kids get back to school in September, they'll give unholy fits to their drivers-ed instructors.
