Review for Fast & Furious 4 Film Set

Introduction
I saw "The Fast and the Furious" at the cinema, I was a semi-petrolhead at the time and the mix of customised cars and street racing made for entertaining, if cheesy, fun. The original film starred Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Paul Walker, the first two of whom decided that the first sequel, "2 Fast 2 Furious", wasn't for them so Paul Walker teamed up with Tyrese and Eva Mendes. The third movie, "The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift", is actually out of sequence, actually occurring after the fourth, and aside from a small cameo by Vin Diesel doesn't feature the original cast at all. The fourth movie, "Fast and Furious" sees the original cast reunited.

The Fast and the Furious spawned a few years of young men (and women) in the UK cruising around town centres at nights with bodykits, alloy wheels, under-car lighting and subwoofers thumping. Some of the resulting cars were nice, most were sheds on wheels, especially compared to the expensive eye-candy on-show in the movies. Another side effect of the films was people importing cheap (and buggered) Nissan Skylines etc. from Japan and then realising that actually whilst they could afford to buy them, running them was a different matter altogether.

Police crackdowns and latterly the credit crunch, have reversed the trend, as young people can't afford to tart up their cars, or insure them anymore. I speak from experience, having for several years run a car accessory/modification business which saw streams of young Fast and Furious Fans spending incredible amounts of money on their credit cards tarting up tat like Vauxhall Corsas and ancient Honda Civics etc…

For the record, amongst the cars I owned during this period was a Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo (hardtop, short wheelbase), with around 450bhp - it was a monster - but hugely expensive to keep on the road.

This boxset (mine comes in a "limited edition") steelbook, is available for under £20 and is pretty good value for money for four movies.

Video
The video is presented in 2.35:1 1080P anamorphic widescreen (movies 1 to 3) and 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen 1080P (movie 4).

I've not watched my DVD copies of these four movies for some time (and as I've already sold some of them since buying this Blu-ray I'm unable to do a direct comparison), but I'd say that whilst this is no means a reference Blu-ray disc in terms of picture quality, it's pretty good and I didn't have any complaints about the picture quality whatsoever. As you would probably expect, the picture quality gets better as the series gets more recent.

The picture is crisp and colourful (as are the cars) and the mixture of daytime and night-time racing leads to some entertaining visuals.

The film glamourises Nitrous Oxide injection, adding a ridiculous motion blur when it is activated, suggesting that suddenly your 500bhp plus car will spin the wheels at 100mph plus and disappear into the distance. Having driven a number of cars with Nitrous (and worked for a company that installed it), this makes me laugh - the reality is far removed from Hollywood's interpretation. Yes, it gives you better acceleration, no the world doesn't become a blur…

Some other effects are a bit dubious too, one that springs to mind is the ludricrous "Dukes of Hazzard" jump at the end of the second film…

Visually, the third movie is my favourite, and has some fantastic driving/drifting in and around Tokyo, some great sequences, especially at night. This is also perhaps my favourite movie out of the three as it still feels the freshest of them all, despite the fourth film only having been released last year.

The fourth movie has a stupendous opening sequence, however the visuals during the rest of the film can't match the impact of the first 5 minutes.

Sound
All four films feature English DTS-HD Master Audio spread over 5.1 channels, and all of them sound good. Again as the films get newer, the sound gets better, with plenty of rear channel effects during the race sequences and plenty of bassy music throughout all of the films.

The dialogue is clearly reproduced from the centre channel on all four films.

Again not reference material, but nothing to complain about.

Extras
There are a number of extras available - I didn't have time to watch them all, but they were of the promotional "star sitting down in front of a movie poster" type and not especially exciting. The gag reel in particular was spectacularly dull.

Overall
Overall despite a good helping of cheese, I watched all four films over two days and enjoyed them all. I think in order of preference, I like Tokyo Drift, The Fast and the Furious, Fast & Furious and lastly 2 Fast 2 Furious.

The picture and sound quality on all four movies is good, an improvement over DVD but Blu-ray reference material. The extras that I watched weren't especially exciting.

Overall, four films for under £20 on Blu-ray in a Steelbook case is pretty good value all things considered, so I am very happy with my purchase, and anyone who is a fan of the films could do a lot worse than pick this boxset up.