The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

Lucas Black plays a high school kid in Tokyo Drift with the drawl and jawline of a guy who already owns a lawnmower he’s proud of, and nobody in the movie notices. The plot is just as sleepy: new kid in town, a girl, a bully with better hair, an uncle in organized crime and one final race to settle it all. The dialogue is cardboard. Then Sung Kang strolls in as Han, snacking constantly, the most chill guy in Tokyo, and the movie gets a heartbeat. He’s so good the series later rearranged its own timeline to keep him around. The drifting is legit gorgeous, cars gliding sideways down parking garage ramps and slicing through the crowded Shibuya crossing like water around rocks. Justin Lin shoots Tokyo at night like a lit-up arcade. Critics landed at 38%. A 5.4 because Han and the driving earn a lot of forgiveness for everything else. $2,487 says you take the next parking garage ramp extra slow, just to hear the tires squeak.

What works: Sung Kang’s Han is effortlessly cool, and the drifting sequences through Tokyo look fantastic.

What doesn’t: The lead is miscast as a teenager, the dialogue is stiff, and the story is a by-the-numbers new-kid plot.

Who it’s for: Car fans who care more about how a scene moves than about what anyone says in it.