fast and furious

I made a bit of a cock-up here.

See, I thought that fast and furious was the first film in this series, but it turns out that the fast and the furious is the first in the series, and fast and furious is the fourth.

I'm not sure when the trend of not simply giving sequels a number started, but Fast and Furious seems to be a chronic case.  The second film is 2 fast 2 furious, so that has numbers, but not in a normal way.  The third film appears to be The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, the there's Fast and Furious and then it goes Fast 5 and Fast 6.

Clearly the furiousness of the cast lessened as the cash rolled in over the series.  Also, I think Tokyo Drift is more like a spin-off than a film in the series proper, so it's all a bit confusing and hence my error, I guess.

I don't think it matters too much, though.  The plot for the film I watched was so simple as to be comparable with a child's crayon scrawled oeuvre.  I mean there's character baggage, sure, but it's so generic and easily understood, it barely needs explaining.

Obviously you can tell I thought the plot was bobbins, but then to be honest a good plot of a film like this is way down the list of what you should be expecting.  A film like this is all about the car action - chases, crashes, stunts, that sort of stuff.

In a way they're like giant cartoons, but only in so far as they're like poor cartoons.  Good cartoons have plots and good characters too.  No, what I mean is that they ignore stuff like physics and are a bit daft in a cartoony way.

And this film delivers to some degree on that.

If I'm honest there was a bit too much farting about with plot and character stuff and it could have done with a lot more of the action element.

Also a lot of the action was a bit too cartoony for me.  I could have done with less in the way of stupid stuff.

However, the thing I'd really complain about was the sound.  It was really difficult to hear the characters talking as they mostly seemed to mumble (or growl menacingly I think was meant to be the idea).  It could have been something wrong with the disc I guess, but the car bits where plenty load.

And that was the problem - I kept turning the sound up to hear what they were saying (or mumbling in a menacing / manly way if you insist) and then suddenly there's squealing tyres and the bending of fenders and blood is leaking out of my ears.

Also, the sound-track seemed pretty poor.  Half the thing of films like this is for the soundtrack to really compliment the action and I barely remember any of it.

So yeah, I don't think I'd really recommend it.  I am planning on watching the other films to see how they compare, though - who knows, perhaps coming in after 4 films does hamper the enjoyment, but I kinda doubt it.