Was that Paul Walker or Keanu Reeves?

Rating: 5/10 (16 January 2002)

Boy, Paul Walker sounds JUST LIKE Keanu Reeves. I kept thinking of "Point Break" the whole time I watched this movie, expecting Detective Brian to ask his superiors "So you're saying the ex-presidents are surfers?"
I distinctly remember seeing the trailer for this movie in front of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and for the first few seconds after seeing Vin Diesel, I was excited about it, but by the end of the trailer, I was a little worried. So I finally picked this one up at the ol' rental store on DVD and gave it a whirl.
Not bad. Not good, but not bad.
Vin Diesel gives a good performance, and I guess you could say Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez do, too, given their limited roles. But Paul Walker -- what are casting directors thinking when he walks in to audition? This guy is bad -- plain bad -- and he brings the movie down, down, down.
But silly me, talking about the performances of the actors, when this movie is plainly about the performances of the vehicles. And perform they do. All the driving stuff is pretty fun in a campy sort of way; I especially like the way the different cars tend to drive in some sort of formation, as if they were the Blue Angels or something. All the racing parts balance against Paul Walker's terrible delivery of his lines to bring the movie up to an acceptable level.