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Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) is back, but he's no longer with the FBI -
that stunt he pulled at the end of the first movie got him kicked off the
force and stuck him with a tarnished record. He moves to Miami and still
does an occasional street race when he needs the cash. US Customs Agent
Markham (James Remar) is working on a case, trying to get the goods on
a drug cartel ringleader named Carter Verone (Cole Hauser); they have an
agent on the inside, Monica (Eva Mendes), but they need Brian's help. He
and old friend/ex-con Roman Pearce (Tyrese) will get clean records if they
agree to take jobs working for Verone as drivers and catch him in a sting
operation with the money and the drugs. Brian and Roman are stuck in the
middle of two factions that think they're "expendable" and the
only people they can depend on for help are their local street racer pals
like Tej (Ludacris) and Suki (Devon Aoki). As the plan is set in motion,
it comes down to one thing: a good friend will always watch your back -
Brian and Roman are betting their lives on that.
The opening sequence promises more of the same high-energy street racing that drove the first film at the box office, but after the initial adrenaline rush wears off, they abandon the street racing and switch to a plot (what were they thinking). Where the first film suffered from not enough story, this one suffers from too much. It's not that the story is a bad one; it just doesn't integrate the fast cars and the street racing with the plotline - all that talk gets in the way of the action. Don't they know that fast cars and fast women are THE reasons people would have any interest in this movie in the first place?
The other kind of action that's missing from this sequel is the juicy kind - there's no romance. You've got hot dudes and sexy bikini-clad babes and nobody hooks up. Paul Walker gets to exchange a couple of innocent pecks on the cheek, but Tyrese doesn't get so much as a hug. He does get to take his shirt off (to the delight of the female audience) - he may not have Vin Diesel's voice, but he looks good bare-chested.
There are cars - lots of them, including some old-fashioned muscle cars that made the hotrod junkies ooh and ah (like the Dodge Challenger). There are street races including one on a busy highway, over an elevated bridge, and racing against a boat on the waterway. The cars are nitro-boosted with a few extra gadgets thrown in and even one stunt that's very "Dukes of Hazard". They re-use the effect where they hit the nitro and everything goes blurry, along with the zoom shots inside the car engine to show the switches that make it happen, but there are a couple of cool stunts we haven't seen before.
The Miami cops, the US Customs agents, and the FBI all come across as bad drivers that are easily fooled (even falling for the same stunt twice). They look so inept, standing around waiting for the bad guys, they might as well be cartoon characters scratching their heads going, "Duh, which way did they go?"
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