SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, corresponding at the time of its release, is the worst entry in the underground racing franchise!
What this movie needed is a protagonist whom we, the audiences could travel with. This is the most fundamental rule of any films you watch. The main character is pivotal, period. Lucas Black plays the hero, whose name one doesn't remember, because that is all the character is worth! He doesn't have a motivation, sense of purpose, dramatic need, stance or anything at all, let alone being charismatic or the very least, watchable! All he does is talk cock, get himself into troubles, winch himself into challenges he can't win, for girls he adamantly wants for God knows what reasons! At the end, what's his character arc? He learnt drifting. That's very helpful.
Apart from how direly the character is written, the actor certainly looks nothing like a high school student! He is sent over to Tokyo for schooling, but he doesn't recognize a single Japanese word. Hold on, how on Earth was he accepted in the school, then? And why are there more Americans studying as well, who are equally illiterate about the local language. Is this some sort of a county after county high school change? Holy, Jesus! Do the screenwriters really think the audiences are total idiots? And how does all the high school students know what happened in the underground racing club, as if every one of them are involved in it? Every foreign students are part of the arena, that's for sure, just because you need English speaking characters around.
There's no plot, there's no direction to the plot and the absence of material is shockingly appalling! This movie is nothing more than just a car studio tour with mindless chases in between. Most of the racing scenes are badly photographed. Side actors and actresses are fake & cheesy. Sung Kang as Han Lue is cool, but it makes no sense for him to pick up a random guy and allowing expensive collateral damage all the way through. Despite whatever reasoning he may have, it just doesn't sit in our minds.
If there are any positives at all, it would be the catchy soundtrack. Opening credits' style is nice, as it is with some of the drifting sequence against the night landscape.
"Life's simple. You make a choice and never look back."