A must for anyone who likes cars, but thats about it

Rating: Null/10 (9 October 2001)

I want to start by saying that this film has some beautiful cars in it that were the result of hundreds of hours of hard work. Rob Cohen does them justice with his slick camera work and effects to really bring the cars to life.
However, the film lacks two ingredients to make it a truly great film. Number one, a plausible plot that flows logically. The basic setting of an underground street racing circuit is an excellent place to start, but to simply use a plot that was dangerously similar to Point Break was disappointing. I found the film was way too easy to predict the ending and unlike Point Break they didn't resolve the outcomes for the majority of the ensemble characters. I thought the film needed to be about 15 to 20 minutes longer so that adequate time could be given to fill out certain parts of the film that seemed to jump from a to b without much substance, i.e. the formation of Brian's relationship to the Toretto siblings.
Two, Vin Diesel does the most with a script that struggled to portray all the multiple facets that his characterization of Dominic Toretto possessed, but Paul Walker simply doesn't have the talent as a leading man to carry the film. I thought Jordana Brewster was good and I would have liked to have seen more of Michelle Rodriguez's character as I really enjoyed her outing in Girlfight, but to no avail.
While I have no doubt that the actors are more than capable of doing a lot better than the script allows, we were not allowed to see it.
I really hope that if they make a sequel, they do it properly.