Cool idea for a flick, but BAD execution!

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2002)

As someone who sold a pretty hot sport compact to make it through university, this flick really p***ed me off. Souped-up cars? I've heard buzz on automotive message forums that the Jetta was an 8V automatic car, and that the green Eclipse was an Eclipse RS. Not that unparralelled realism is expected in car movies (after all, it's not like the Gone in 60 Seconds remake was filmed with REAL GT500s), but most of the cars in the movie were not "hooked-up"... although some of them were (Vin Diesel's love interest's red 240SX is quite famous in the import community and sports an SR20DET; the Supra has a very impressive build sheet and has been featured on ebay several times, etc...)
The movie's not only fake in terms of the cars featured, but its' portrayal of street racing and the sport compact car culture is SO far off as well. 180 mph down city streets!? Setups which DON'T exist? (The SR20/Civic swap has been completed ONCE in real life; T4s in DSMs are unheard-of, and the "naussss" references.) The show's portrayal of asian-americans and the absurdity of many of the races setups and scenes (Jetta vs. S2000 with "$100k under the hood"... riiiiight...) were particularily awful.
Notice I haven't even mentioned the (totally absurd and unrealistic) plot yet?
Now, I'm a big fan of imports, and I even like cheezy, special-effect-substitute-for-budget movies most of the time. It's just that there's very little to recommend in this movie... it paints a totally wrong picture of what really goes on.