JIM reviews = “FAST & FURIOUS [4’] -- Original Parts, with Replacement Chases =

“FAST & FURIOUS [4’] — Original Parts, with Replacement Chases =
[Rating: 7 of 10 stars]

They brought back the 4 main stars of the original: VIN DIESEL (as the gang leader), MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ (as his love), JORDANA BREWSTER (as his sister), & PAUL WALKER (as the “turncoat” FBI agent who once loved the sister). The film starts out with a great road chase concerning hijacking a tanker truck, and that’s followed by loads of other exceptionally well-done car races & chases. There is a story (clearly SECONDARY to the pursuit actions), wherein Diesel goes “motoring” undercover to try to find a drug dealer guy who’d done him “wrong”. There are disagreements between him & “his” people, the FBI & their people, the drug dealers, etc. They just DON’T all get “along”! Diesel (especially when compared to somebody like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) comes across to me as overly “STIFF” & outwardly impassive (except in calculated-violence scenes). The ending is overly “VAGUE” (“hinting”-at, rather than directly showing, “resolution” things, quite possibly with a view for a planned “re-SEQUEL-ing”), &, while the ACTION is fine, that’s pretty much all there really “IS” to this endeavor.