After high-school senior Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) gets into one too many scrapes with the police due to illegal racing – this last one destroyed an entire housing project, plus two cars – his mother ships him off to his military major father (Brian Goodman), who is stationed in Tokyo. Sean is fascinated by the local style of racing, known as "drift," where the cars spend much of their time in a controlled sideways acceleration. He quickly winds up on the wrong side of the Drift King, called "D.K." (Brian Tee), who has an uncle (martial arts star Sonny Chiba) in the yakuza. However, Sean is also befriended by fellow Army brat and local wheeler-dealer Twinkie (Bow Wow) and piques the romantic interest of pretty Neela (Nathalie Kelley) and the professional curiosity of D.K.’s business associate Han (Sung Tang), who both feel that D.K. could do with a little humbling. Naturally, things get a lot more out of hand than anybody expects.

Director Justin Lin doesn’t just make TOKYO DRIFT gorgeous to look at – although he does that very well – he makes the environment resonate with the characters. As Sean belatedly starts to discover a sense of responsibility, we also get that he yearns for a sense of connection to both people and place. We see Tokyo as he sees it – glowing and vibrant, a world that beckons, instead of just colorful background.

The racing, with its emphasis on the spinning sideways drift combined with more conventional forward acceleration, is pretty exciting stuff – again, Lin summons a sense of investment instead of simply asking us to take on faith that he’s showing us something cool.

It helps that the script by Chris Morgan and Alfredo Botello and Kario Salem never gets outrageously huge – the stakes for the characters are critical, but the situations are things that would happen to low-level criminals. The movie also doesn’t get self-righteous or bend itself into pretzels trying to keep everything squeaky-clean – we’re not exactly sure what it is that Sean winds up doing for Han, but we can guess he’s not delivering Girl Scout cookies.

It also helps that Lin has assembled a very on-target cast, headed by Black, who is startlingly good – the actor has strong straight dramatic chops that he applies here without condescending to or being swept away by the material. As Black plays it, this is about a hellraiser finding his maturity – there’s a scene of Sean humbling himself for the greater good here that would be unimaginable in the sometimes silly macho posturing of the two previous FURIOUS adventures. Tang, who also played someone named Han in director Lin’s BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, is the epitome of laid-back cool without seeming indifferent, Kelley is charming (a little like an adolescent Morena Baccarin) and Tee is convincingly resentful and desperate. Chiba has authority to spare as the mob boss who casts a long shadow; Bow Wow, in the most conventional role, has good energy.

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT is very much of its genre – lots of cars, cute people and a smattering of crime. It proves, however, that it’s possible to do a perfectly fine specimen of this type of movie, fun for anybody who can respond to its elements (and there’s an added grace note in the tag scene that will please fans of the franchise).