Intermission: '2 Fast' long on action, short on script, dialogue

Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

John Singleton's new film a sequel to "The Fast and the Furious," the surprise action hit of 2001 will no doubt appeal to the intellectual and philosophical sides of its target demographic.

It should be noted that the target demographic for "2 Fast 2 Furious" is obviously adolescent males who love hip-hop music, hangin' with their buddies and, most of all, fast cars.

Many a kid stays awake at night and dreams of the day, years away, when he will finally get his driver's license and can begin terrorizing the streets in loud, fast cars instead of on his bike and board.

To this audience, "2 Fast" will go down as "the most awesome movie ever made, dude!"

For the rest of us, it will be something a little less.

For me, it is something a lot less. There's a laughably bad script, filled with clich after clich and dialogue that sounds as if was written for a "Bad Short Story" contest. To call the acting cardboard would be an insult to cardboard actors everywhere.

To be fair, though, it does have a few nearly saving graces.

At the conclusion of "The Fast and the Furious," Brian O'Connor, a Los Angeles cop played by Paul Walker, is booted off the force.

He had been chasing Vin Diesel throughout the entire film and, in the end, let him go free. O'Connor is now living in Miami and is heavily involved in the illegal street racing life.

The first act of "2 Fast" is excruciatingly loud, and while some of the shots are exciting, there's just too many of them. Few people can spend an entire day on a roller coaster. At some point, fun time is over.

After one of the big races, the feds (it's always those darn feds!) swoop in and arrest O'Connor.

They've got a deal for him those feds always have a deal. There's this drug kingpin (did I have to tell you that?) who's about to skip the country. He's looking to hire a couple of fast (and presumably furious) drivers.

The feds have got a person on the inside (those feds always ... OK, OK, enough already) and she can get O'Connor an audition with the boss.

For O'Connor's driving partner, the feds have selected a young agent of their own. This doofus knows less about cars than I do and probably drives about as well.

O'Connor agrees to take the job on the condition that he gets to choose his own partner. The agents reluctantly agree. The only one who doesn't agree is Roman Pearce (Tyrese), the partner in question. Pearce and O'Connor are old pals but now have some bad blood between them.

As is wont to happen in these films, Pearce is given an offer he can't refuse. So he signs on.

The agent working the inside is Monica Fuentes, played by Eva Mendes. I would say she's the eye candy in this film but that would be a misstatement. The eye candy here is the cars, or maybe the entire movie itself.

In a driving-and-general-mayhem contest, the team of O'Connor and Pearce proves to be the best. So, as planned, they are hired for the job.

After a lot of gratuitous driving scenes and much more nausea-inducing camerawork, "2 Fast 2 Furious" settles into the third act. While this proves to be the most interesting, and least physically annoying, "The French Connection" it ain't.

Every film such as this has to have at least one new twist on the "car chase" and the one here is pretty good. It features more cop cars more vehicles of all types, including helicopters to grace the screen simultaneously than any chase scene in memory.

Besides that fairly fun scene, "2 Fast's" other high point is singer/actor Tyrese. He delivers his dialogue a whole lot more believably than any of the more experienced actors in "2 Fast 2 Furious," and I look forward to seeing him in better films. Being in a better film should not be too difficult unless the movie industry is headed to an all-time low.

No one said summer films were expected to be artful think pieces, but even dumb fun can have its redeeming values. I suspect 2003 will go down as "the summer of the fast cars."

Only recently did the automobiles steal the show in "The Italian Job," and they do so in "2 Fast 2 Furious."

As far as it goes, this movie is 2 Dumb 2 Be 4Given.