As you may recall, I did not really care for the original “The Fast and the Furious”. Now, we have “2 Fast 2 Furious”, a film with one of the dumbest titles I have ever seen. It’s pretty more of the same with heavy reliance on special effects during the racing scenes and almost a complete reliance on mean attitudes for the story and characters.

Former-cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker “Eight Below”) is caught by authorities after taking part in an illegal street race. He is recruited to help bust a dangerous Miami crime boss with the help of his old friend Roman (Tyrese Gibson “Baby Boy”, “Transformers”).

Paul Walker is just there and leaves no real impact whatsoever with his performance. Tyrese Gibson is just really annoying as Roman. The villain is so bland that even a scene in which he tortures a cop with a rat and blowtorch (you read that right) is underwhelming. Eva Mendes (“Hitch”, “The Other Guys”) is okay as an undercover cop but she does not have a great deal to do. Most of the other characters are fairly forgettable. They mainly just spout out dumb phrases as they speed around the streets in flash cars.

One of my big problems with the first movie was the use of lots of special effects during the racing scenes and that problem is just as present in this sequel. There are so many shots during the driving segments that were clearly made with a computer that the races look about as realistic as the podracing in “Star Wars”. The characters are not endearing and the story is just an excuse for a bunch of driving scenes. I just do not get why the “Fast and Furious” films are so popular but there is clearly an audience for them because they keep churning these movies out.