The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (HD DVD)

When country bumpkin Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is sent to live with his father in Tokyo his dreams of street-racing take on a whole new persona. Instead of crashing through model homes and racing ex-"Home Improvement" stars (Zachery Ty Bryan) he takes on the Japanese underworld. D.K. is known as the Drift King a style of street-racing involving e-brake slides and while this movie worked the first time in theaters it doesn't translate so well to repeated viewings. However, HD DVD-style Universal has upped the high-def goodness with an all new interactive feature that kicks much ass.

I am going to try and be as positive as I can because I want you to keep reading. This review is more about the HD DVD than the movie. While I don't think you should buy Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift for your collection you do need to keep an eye out for the all new Universal "U-Control" special feature to be found on this and HD DVD releases to come.

Until now Warner has pretty much had a stronghold on the HD DVD exclusive bonus features, but with Fast and the Furious and now Tokyo Drift they have thrown their hat firmly back in the ring, but the "U Control" feature is more than just an accompanying video feature such as you will see on Warner releases and Fast and the Furious. Instead, "U Control" provides a small navigation located in the lower right-hand corner of the television screen that changes based on what features are available at any one time.

Throughout the entire movie you will have the option for the Picture-In-Picture feature, which is the now standard accompanying video feature providing commentary, interviews and behind-the-scenes action. One of the cool little bonuses this time around though is the ability to change the volume on the PIP in an effort to make it stand out from the audio of the feature. Next you will have access to storyboards as a new icon will pop-up when they are available. By using your remote you will select this feature and storyboards relating to the scene you are watching will play in-time with the movie. Trust me, this is the best way to see storyboards, I am thoroughly bored with looking at storyboards as a special feature, at least this way I was slightly more entertained. The third feature is similar to the storyboard feature, but instead of storyboards you get production photos of behind-the-scenes and so forth.

Those are pretty much the standard features; the exclusive features to Tokyo Drift actually make this movie far more enjoyable. First is the slightly less cool feature which is a GPS tracker that shows you exactly where in Tokyo the scenes are supposed to be taken, even though a lot of the chase scenes were shot in L.A. The second feature is far cooler as it pops up during any race/chase scene and offers a damage assessment anytime a car is crashed and burned in the flick. It makes the movie far more enjoyable when you see the pop-up say "Car Totaled" only a second before it flips over and starts on fire. Fun times man, fun times.

As far as the rest of the features go you can read Laremy's review of the DVD version for that. To place it in perspective they aren't very good as stand alone pieces. The "U Control" feature pretty much uses all of the bonus features and in a context that is tolerable. If I have to hear how cool drifting is or watch these guys swerve around the tracks one more time it won't be too soon.

While Tokyo Drift is an unfortunate first movie to show off the "U Control" feature it is something to definitely look out for with future HD DVD releases. I have started growing weary with current DVD special features, but with HD DVD and getting virtually everything in the span of the feature it really makes getting the behind-the-scenes info that much more interesting and entertaining. I can't wait for more discs like it.