FAST & FURIOUS

This is opening weekend for FAST & FURIOUS, which is the fourth movie of the high charged Fast & Furious movie franchise!

Here's a brief review of the previous films:

In the first movie, "The Fast & The Furious", Brian, played by Paul Walker, is a cop who goes undercover into a street gang to find out who is stealing high priced electronic equipment. Dom, played by Vin Diesel, is the leader of the gang who is under suspicion of committing the the crimes. Brian becomes involved with Dom's sister and ends up trying to prove Dom's innocence.

In 2 Fast & 2 Furious, the second movie, Brian has left LA due to his illegal actions from the first movie, and now he's in Miami, making a living by street racing. Once he gets caught, he's offered a deal: go undercover to bring down a drug lord, and his criminal record will be wiped clean. He recruits an old friend to help him with the same deal that he was offered himself. (Vin Diesel does not appear in this one)

The third movie, The Fast & The Furious - Tokyo Drift, parts ways with both Brian and Dom, and we meet Shawn Boswell, a high school student who keeps getting into trouble until he finally has no choice but to go live with his father in Tokyo. However, he gets involved in street racing there as well. When he loses a race to the "Drift King", he goes to the underworld to pay his debt.

Now that you're up to speed...

FAST & FURIOUS opens up to an adrenaline charged scene where the gang is hi-jacking a bigrig for its oil - although they're trying to do it without the driver knowing it. We see our old friend Han (from Tokyo Drift). Later, he tells Dom that he's gonna check out Tokyo - so from that scene we know that this story takes place at the same time or a little bit before the story of Tokyo Drift takes place.

After that heist, the gang splits up. Since Dom is a fugitive, he doesn't want his friends going down when the police finally catch him. After some time on the run, he gets word that a friend has been murdered. So he goes back to LA to find out who did it.

This is where Brian comes in. He is still a cop, and he's also looking for the murderer. Eventually, Brian crosses paths with Dom, and while there are some hard feelings there, they end up working towards the same goal. Which proves challenging since Brian is trying to maintain his clean record with the LAPD, while Dom is trying to keep from getting caught by the LAPD. It was good to see those two back together in a movie! Eventually, their search leads them to a big time drug smuggler. They are forced to trust each other to make sure that they get their man.

Of course, there are races, chases, explosions, crashes...the usual. If you are a fan of the series, you will like this one too.