A guilty pleasure with excess horsepower, The Fast and the Furious efficiently combines time-honoured male fantasies (hot cars, hot action) into a vacuous plot of crystalline purity. A hotshot Los Angeles cop named Brian (Paul Walker) infiltrates a gang of street racers suspected of stealing goods from hijacked trucks. The gang leader is Dom (Vin Diesel), ex-con and reigning king of the street racers, who lives for those 10 seconds of freedom when his highh-performance "rice rocket".

Racing is street theatre for a lawless youth subculture, and Dom is a star behind the wheel--charismatic, dangerous and protective toward his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), who's attracted to Brian as the newest member of Dom's car-crazy team.

Digital trickery is cleverly employed to explore the fuel-injected innards of the day-glo racecars.