In the Flesh: Fast & Furious (Patreon)

If Fast & Furious represents a return to the meatheaded stupidity and cartoonish logic of the first two films after the brief respite of Tokyo Drift’s low stakes and relative sense of realism, at least it doesn’t return to their visual laziness. Justin Lin is still at the helm and his eye for framing and lighting remains strong enough that even the film’s more Loony Tunes-esque moments — drag racing through secret drug tunnels under the US-Mexican border, for instance — play as more exciting than ridiculous. In an early shot of Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), now reinstated as an FBI agent, in his office I actually found myself admiring the play of light over his hair and skin, a tricolor setup clearly chosen with great care. It’s nice to watch something a human being gave a shit about making!

Make no mistake, though: Fast 4 is ridiculous. Beyond the aforementioned tunnels we have Batman-esque rooftop threatening sequences, high-speed car chases pitting Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian against a drug lord’s fleet of monster trucks and sports cars, and other general side-of-the-van-art hijinks. Without Shea Whigham’s curmudgeonly, interfering agent Stasiak and Diesel’s velvety, whiskey-voiced movie star charisma to weight the whole thing down it’d be insubstantial enough to float away. Walker still can’t act, even better costumed, directed, and shot, and there aren’t any secondary players of consequence. The film’s villain, drug lord Arturo Braga (John Ortiz), doesn’t add much to the mix with his generic evil good humor..

The single most interesting thing happening here that hasn’t happened in previous films is the delightful focus on wrecks. Lin really lingers over his scenes of vehicular carnage, from the eye-popping roll Brian endures at the end of the climactic chase to the opening sequence in which a burning fuel tanker flips down a mountain road — shot with a real sense of speed and vertigo, thank God. Sure there’s some shaky CGI and we’re ultimately more or less retreading old territory, and sure the characters aren’t very interesting, but god damn would I sit through a lot worse to see Vin Diesel execute a guy with a muscle car at 95mph.