The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift – Blu-ray Disc Review
July 25, 2009 – 11:43 AM - Posted by: Brendan SurplessTags: BD-Live, Bonus View, Bow Wow, Brian Tee, Digital Copy, Justin Lin, Lucas Black, Nathalie Kelley, Sung Kang, Universal, Zachery Ty Bryan
has an average rating of 5.6 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
HD-DVD ports, a Digital Copy & more
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– 2006
– 104 Minutes
– Universal
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This uses 24.6GB for the movie out of 40.8GB total.
Street Date: July 28th, 2009
Overall Verdict – Recommended
Buy it for $20.99 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Brendan Surpless —
The Movie Itself was directed by Justin Lin who also went on to direct this film’s sequel earlier this year, “Fast & Furious“. “The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift is just as enjoyable as the previous two and the addition of a total new locale does add quite a bit to the film’s strength. Anyhow, Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is your typical high school character. He loves fixing his car, racing and subsequently gets into a lot of trouble. After ‘gawking’ at the girlfriend of Clay (Zachary Ty Bryan), an immediate race occurs through the backlot of a new development. Chaos ensues and the police, due to Sean’s high trouble rate, end up sending Sean to live with his father in Tokyo. So let me understand this. If I were to get into a lot of trouble and my father lived in a foreign country, I would avoid jail time and get to go stay with him? Riggggghhhttt.
Anyhow, besides this minor story flaw, Sean soon arrives in Tokyo and promises his father he won’t do any street racing. Obviously Sean quickly involves himself after meeting Twinkie (Bow Wow). Twinkie brings Sean to an underground garage where everyone races and, something new to Sean, drifts. For some reason, Sean gets to prove himself by racing the ultra famous Drift King (Brian Tee). One of his friends Han (Sung Kang) lets Sean borrow his vehicle, which Sean obviously destroys. To repay his debt, Han enlists Sean as his new boy. The two quickly develop a friendship and Han decides to have Sean become of his racers, but first Sean must learn the art of drifting. The rest of the film follows a solid story that never seems to stem away from making sense resulting in the best of the three films.
In closing, Director Justin Lin hasn’t really had many breakout films in his career. If “Tokyo” is a sign of what Lin can do, I’m sure that the rest of his films will be interesting. Lin is successful at presenting another portion of the series in a very interesting locale where the city of Tokyo is brought to life in a great manner. Fearing that this film would rely on more of the flashy cars instead of a story, I was pleasantly surprised that the film contained such a good story. Nothing felt out of place and the film flowed well. If you’ve seen the first two films in the series, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to see “Tokyo” as it may be the best of the three films. This earns a “4 Star Rating“.
Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc). “The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift” (AVC MPEG-4) is presented in 2.40:1 aspect ratio and uses 24.6GB for the movie out of 40.8GB total.
First off, colors are gorgeously crystal clear. The warm city lights of Tokyo are brought alive via lush darks and vivid bright yellows. The obvious attraction of the film, being the cars, are sparkling and, well for use of a better term here, tricked out. I sometimes worried that all the attention to detail on each and every car would result in some of the car’s looking overly shiny thus creating a poor image. No such thing is found here. The attention to detail on Universal’s part is immaculate here.
After watching the film for a second time, I could not detect one area where the film’s image wasn’t sharp. Little items like artifacts, grain, pixilation, and edge enhancement are nowhere to be found. This earns an improved “4.5 Star Rating“.
Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. When you pop this disc in for someone, the first scenes that everyone will want to see are the car race sequences or the various crashes. This is completely understandable as all the little sounds are shown off in excellent form. Surrounds are some of the best yet heard. The bigger car crashes cause a ringing effect creating a truly awesome experience. Even the little sounds like people cheering, crowds yelling and tires screeching are delivered in great form.
Dialogue, surprisingly I might add, was no real issue. I had feared that the overly loud audio track would require myself to consistently raise and lower the volume. Granted I use using the remote a lot, but that was more for the awesome Picture in Picture extra (more on that later though). One of my favorite demo scenes (which I rewound quite a bit) was the sequence (chapter 8 I believe) where Han and Sean are drifiting around the car in the middle of an intersection. Truly great stuff when it’s pumped up loud. This earns a perfect “5 Star Rating“.
Bonus Materials are almost all presented in a combination of Hi-Def (HD) video using VC-1 and standard definition video using MPEG-2 with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound @192kbps.
- BD-Live is included which allows users on a “Profile 2.0” capable Blu-ray Disc Player to access online features and content.
- U-Control: Here Universal’s patented U-Control is broken down to a few different areas. We have Picture in Picture that gives us various cast interviews and behind the scenes footage as the film runs. Storyboards explores the concepts of film via various storyboards. Tech Specs gives us all the various technical specs about the cars during the film’s course. The best thing is that it actually gives us various damage total as the car’s are wrecked. GPS gives us the ability to follow the cars as we watch the film’s main racing sequence. Production Photographs gives us behind the scenes photos from the set. For a truly interesting look at what U-Control is about, go to the film’s main racing sequence and enjoy.
- Making of The Fast Franchise (NEW): THis runs 17min2sec and gives us a making of the entire 4 films. We also get a brief look into what we can expect from the upcoming 4th film.
- Drift: A Sideways Craze (NEW): This runs 1hr in length and is quite possibly the best feature found on ANY of the discs. This is a documentary that covers the lives of three real-life drift drivers at different points in their lives. What was most entertaining and informative was how this didn’t feel manufactured but actually gave and honest look into drifting. Since I enjoyed the 3rd film the most this documentary was great.
- Audio Commentary with Director Justin Lin: Director Justin Lin does come off as a typical young director would in this commentary track. He overly exclaims about his cast, never finding faults in any scenes. The good thing despite him being like this, is that Lin is very interesting and fun to listen to as he comes off as a normal kind of guy. Topics of discussion include production details, film origins and casting.
- Drifting School: Here we get to see just exactly how the entire cast trained to drift.
- Trick Out To Drift: This feature goes over some of the various cars (nearly 230) used in the film.
- The Big Breakdown: Another feature that looks into the various cars and how they were modified for the film.
- Han’s Last Ride: This feature looks into the big crash that occurs during the film.
- Cast Cam: The standard ‘give the actors/actresses cameras and see what they record’ feature.
- The Real Drift King: Kelichi Tsuchlay, the world’s real drift king, is interviewed here.
- The Japanese Way: The last of six features focuses on how the cast and crew managed to film in the country of Tokyo.
- Deleted Scenes: Here we get roughly 18 minutes of various deleted scenes. Luckily, unlike a majority of deleted scenes, these deleted scenes were quite enjoyable to watch. A lot of character information and expansion is dealt with including Twinkie’s devious side and Sean’s side with DK.
- Digital Copy: Here we get a Digital Copy of the film that works in either iTunes or Windows Media Player
- “D-BOX” motion code is included if you have the proper equipment to enjoy this feature, which we unfortunately do not and cannot offer you a review of that portion.
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
Screenshots:
NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.
