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The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift
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 The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift Production NotesChapter one brought to the screen the underground world of American muscle cars and dangerous street racing from the City of Angels. Chapter two told a tale of Miami money laundering, redemption and the latest sleek racers available to men with fortunes to burn. Now, the newest and fastest customized rides go head-to-head on some of the world's most perilous courses in the latest installment of the adrenaline-spiking series built on speed-The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
Welcome to the sexy, forbidden and hyperkinetic underground of Tokyo, where the latest trend to emerge from Japan is taking over the world…one drift at a time.
Following in the tracks of its predecessors, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift presents the hottest chapter yet in the popular series that has accumulated more than $443 million at the worldwide box office. Taking racing out of the States and into the post-modern city of Tokyo, Japan, Tokyo Drift brings moviegoers to a sport that simultaneously assaults the senses and delivers daredevil thrills.
Welcome to the tense era of teenage outcasts living in a universe of explosive, white-knuckled street racing, deeply entrenched in Tokyo's hidden racing scene. Hot cars and sexy girls venture into forbidden territory when drifting is injected in the mix. This distinctly Japanese style of driving defines a new type of driver whose technique must blend effortlessly with daring speed, where control in the realm of no control is more important than crossing the finish line first.
Although street racing provides an escape from an unhappy home and the superficial world around him, for outsider Sean Boswell (Lucas Black, Friday Night Lights), his reckless involvement in the sport has made him very unpopular with the local authorities. After one crash too many-and to avoid jail time-Sean is sent to live with his gruff, estranged father, a career military man stationed in Tokyo.
Now officially a gaijin (outsider), Sean feels even more shut out in a land of foreign customs and codes of honor. But after a fellow American buddy, Twinkie (Bow Wow, Johnson Family Vacation), introduces him to the underground world of drift racing-an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a heart-stopping course of hairpin turns and switchbacks-he's hooked again, and back in trouble. Simple drag racing is replaced by a new, rubber-burning automotive art form…just bad enough to fit Sean's rebel style.
On his first time out drifting, Sean unknowingly takes on D.K. (Brian Tee, Fun with Dick and Jane), the “Drift King,” a local champ with ties to the Japanese crime syndicate Yakuza. Sean's loss comes with a high price tag when he's forced to work off the debt under the thumb of another ex-pat named Han (Sung Kang, Better Luck Tomorrow). Han soon welcomes Sean into his family of misfits and introduces him to the real principles of drifting. Whether for pink slips, wads of cash or bragging rights, the stakes remain high for Sean and his competition…as they learn to elevate the race itself to an art form. They will take cutting-edge, modified racers to the densely populated streets of Tokyo's urban landscape at neck-snapping speeds then smoothly glide through tight hairpin turns punctuated by screeches and the acrid smell of smoking rubber.
But when Sean falls for D.K.'s girlfriend, Neela (newcomer Nathalie Kelley), an explosive series of events is set into motion, climaxing with an ultimate high-stakes face-off against his nemesis. Punishment for the loser? Banishment from Tokyo forever by Yakuza crime boss-and D.K.'s uncle-Kamata (the legendary Sonny Chiba, Kill Bill: Vol. 1)…if they survive the race at all. Honor will be challenged and racing skills will be pushed to the extreme…with only one winner standing as champion in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
Controlling the Uncontrollable
In contemplating a return to this world of fast cars and faster attitude, filmmakers behind The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift knew they must retain what was unique about the franchise: misunderstood people on the outskirts of society who are drawn into a world of fantastic cars…a metaphor for losing control in an insane world. For successful filmmaker Neal H. Moritz, producing a third movie in the immensely popular series warranted a fresh take on the car culture of street racers that has continued to intrigue audiences around the world.
Moritz offers, “We didn't want to do a third in the series unless we had somewhere else to go with the storyline. One day, the idea of Tokyo came up, and the team was discussing that it was the birthplace of this new side of racing called `drifting.' I thought, `this is something we have to do.' The results speak for themselves, and I couldn't be happier with the film.”
He continues, “When we saw underground footage of it, it sparked my interest. It puts you in this trance. You throw caution to the wind. It's controlled chaos where you're sliding into turns…you go around corners…taking fenders so close to any object as you glide around it gracefully.”
Vital to Moritz was maintaining the combination of fast-paced action and super-charged riders that established the franchise. The next chapter of the story, set amidst the city's sexy counterculture where the old rules no longer apply, would need to be told under the direction of a young filmmaker who could deliver pulse-pounding action with a new cast of characters. That man was Justin Lin.
“If we were going to do a third Fast and Furious, it needed to feel fresh,” says Moritz. “After I'd seen Better Luck Tomorrow, I knew Justin was a director I wanted to do business with. He was the first we approached, and…he loved the idea of filming it. This movie needed enthusiasm, and he was the director to do it. Absolutely tireless.”
Recalls Lin, who wasn't intimately familiar with drifting when approached to helm the project, “I was in film school when The Fast and the Furious came out, and I saw it along with a sold-out crowd who just ate it up. What really excited me about directing this film was the chance to harness that energy-create a whole new chapter and up the ante by bringing something new to the table for the audience who loves action and speed.”
The director knew that if he was going to tackle the project, he had to stay true to the sport of drifting, and the spirit behind it. Lin remarks, “Drifting came about from a working-class group of kids living in the mountains of Japan on really windy roads. They were attempting to find the fastest way to get down these trails. Visually, that's stunning to observe.”
It was fortunate for Lin and Moritz that they found a screenwriter who was obsessed with the series. Chris Morgan-an avid car enthusiast whose unabashed delight at the prospect of owning, let alone driving, a “wicked short block Toyota Supra that puts out 900 horsepower at the rear wheels”-knew that drifting was a natural fit for the next story in The Fast and the Furious franchise.
Morgan laid out the story for the filmmakers, and a new chapter chronicling the next generation of renegades and the newest models of tricked-out rides was set in motion. “Drifting isn't about pushing buttons and stomping pedals and holding on. It's about knowing your car better than the guy who made it. These guys are magicians who take their rides to the very brink of physics, then hold them there, surfing it out on the razor-edge of control. It's loud and dirty and beautiful. Dangerous as hell, and I fell in love with it the instant I saw it.”
Key to Lin's approach to the project was to capture an authenticity when it came to the complexities of modern teen life and to create a believable world of young outsiders who live on the edge. The Fast and the Furious franchise has catapulted the careers of its leading men (including Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson and Vin Diesel). Actor Lucas Black, who starred in the high-school football thriller Friday Night Lights and co-starred in the military drama Jarhead, is set on that same trajectory with his tremendous onscreen charisma and natural acting style.
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Lucas Black as Sean Boswell and Nathalie Kelley as Neela in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
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