My expectation for this movie was a pathetic story used largely as an excuse to show hot girls and expensive custom cars driving fast with lots of bikinis and street-racing / car chasing action, which has been the standard for the popular street-racing films from Hollywood recently. Surprisingly this movie, while still keeping the many stereotypical themes from this genre, had a story that was well thought-out, unpredictable, and became an excellent foundation upon which to build the street-racing and car chasing action I was looking for.
Unfortunately there were some unfortunate goofs in the movie and the dialog was very weak at times -- I believe it could have been much better than it was.
This movie is also missing some of the big expensive and flashy action scenes from Hollywood street-racing movies. However, looking back on the movie I feel this served to make the movie more real and less imaginary. Writing as someone who views "The Fast and The Furious" as Hollywood's pathetic attempt at making a respectable street-racing movie I was able to watch this movie and, at long last, actually care about how winning or losing street-races impacted the story being told. The ending turned out to be a lot simpler than I would have preferred but it did bring the story full circle to a satisfying conclusion.
And I hope the reference to the Initial-D anime (with the cup of water in the car) was intentional, it was a nice touch.
