The Fast And The Furious

It's set among LA's street-racing tribe, who are penetrated by an undercover cop (Paul Walker) joining the fuel-injection car club to discover who's hijacking the big-rig truckers on the Pacific coast highway. But will buddy-buddy loyalties push law-enforcement duties out of pole position? With testosterone in everyone's tank, who needs a smarter script?

As it's a "small" picture, sans A-list stars like Stallone or Schwarzenegger, it has to put its money where its tyres are; and that's no bad thing. The stunts are near unbelievable, yet guaranteed in the credits as "genuine and dangerous", not created by computergenerated imagery. They also recall other traditions of horsepower. The souped-up pirate Hondas scooting under - yes, under - the chassis of 12-wheel trucks behave like the acrobatic Redskins in John Ford's Western, Stagecoach.

For vehicular variety, there's villainous Asian-American Rick Yune on his two-wheeled crotch-rocket - motorbike to non-saddle tramps - while stay-home types can boggle at one of the film's locations in the extraordinary house like an all-glass doughnut, said to be the love nest that Eddie Fisher built for Elizabeth Taylor in the 1950s. If not better days, it has certainly seen quieter ones. But if you're tempted sometimes to put your fingers in your ears, you will likely be compelled to keep your eyes on the screen and risk a tyre-tread on your face.

The Fast And The Furious
Cert: 15