At the beginning of 2 Fast 2 Furious, cop-cum-drag-racer Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) has relocated to Florida in mild disgrace after letting the Vin Diesel character escape at the end of The Fast and the Furious. When his comedy boss from the first film shows up again, he has a chance to clean his record if he'll undertake one last undercover job, as a driver for flamboyant Miami crime kingpin Carter Verone (Cole Hauser). As his partner, he ropes in boyhood friend Roman Pearce (Tyrese), an ex-con who officially hates him for becoming a cop but is soon revving up the old male-bonding licks as they start burning rubber in a succession of high-octane chase and crash sequences that show off muscle cars in cockatoo colours.

Though Diesel is gone from the franchise, 2 Fast 2 Furious doesn't miss him--the human beings are mostly there to decorate the machines, with pretty girls and boys wearing chassis-accentuating outfits and spouting a hip-hop translation of what seems like an action-movie script from 1938. The baddie is nasty (especially when using the old rat-in-a-hot-bucket torture), the people are decorative, the music is as loud as the engine roar, the cars are like big clunky toys and director John Singleton can stage dangerous driving as expertly as anyone. It won't get anyone's brain in gear, but it delivers its adrenalin rushes as required.--Kim Newman