2 Fast 2 Furious

Directed by John Singleton, 2 Fast 2 Furious follows Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner as he reluctantly agrees to go undercover again to catch a vicious drug lord named Carter Verone (Cole Hauser) – with the character receiving help from childhood buddy Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and fellow undercover agent Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes). Filmmaker Singleton delivers a sporadically watchable yet predominantly forgettable thriller that benefits from the strong work of its various performers, and although Walker is certainly quite affable as the movie’s protagonist, Hauser’s mustache-twirling turn as the larger-than-life villain, which remains a continuing highlight within the proceedings, goes a long way towards perpetuating the picture’s mostly tolerable atmosphere. (It’s impossible, for example, not to get a kick out of Carter’s method for extracting information out of Mark Boone Junior’s dirty cop.) The problem is, though, that Singleton, armed with Michael Brandt and Derek Haas’ screenplay, has infused 2 Fast 2 Furious with a relentlessly slick and generic sensibility that generally prevents the viewer from connecting to the characters or material, and there’s little doubt, ultimately, that the arms-length atmosphere is compounded by an almost total lack of exciting, memorable action sequences. (A ridiculous climax involving a car that jumps onto a yacht is a rare exception to this.) The end result is a just-barely-passable piece of work that fares just about as well as its relentlessly mediocre predecessor, which is disappointing, surely, given the mere presence of Singleton behind the camera.

**1/2 out of ****