WITH their careers stalled, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker have consented to grace the witless retread called “Fast & Furious” with their first joint appearance since “The Fast and the Furious” in 2001.
The stars look bored out of their minds when the fourth episode of the franchise stalls between racing sequences, which is all too often in a flick where 106 minutes speed by in what feels like at least four hours.
Their ennui is a sentiment likely to be shared by audience members, who unlike Diesel and Walker are not receiving seven-figure salaries for enduring this misfire.
Director Justin Lin (“The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”) stages some OK chase sequences — particularly a couple set in an underground tunnel that handily runs under the Mexico-US border — but can’t muster much interest in the paper-thin plot, which was apparently souped up to showcase producer Diesel’s alleged acting chops.
Diesel’s street-racing outlaw Dom Toretto ends several years of self-
imposed exile in Mexico when his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez, returning from the first movie for what amounts to a star-billed cameo) is killed during a smuggling run.
Tearful Dom heads back across the border to get even with the culprit, a sociopathic drug kingpin who it just happens is also being sought by his best frenemy, federal agent Brian O’Connor (Walker).
The two meet cute when Brian arrives to interrogate a suspect Dom is already hanging by his ankles out a fifth-story window.
I can’t say I remember much of the low-octane capers that transpire after that without consulting my notes. Mostly it involves Dom administering extreme corporal punishment, demolishing vehicles and spouting dimwitted bon mots while Brian struggles to look interested.
Jordana Brewster, the Yale University scion who returns to the thankless role of Dom’s sister and Brian’s putative love interest, after drifting deeply into acting obscurity, seems particularly sullen.
Perhaps she resents that Rodriguez was allowed to quickly escape from “Fast & Furious,” while she is obliged to stick around while the movie crashes and burns around her. Perhaps we can all learn from her experience.
FAST & FURIOUS
An utter drag.
Running time: 106 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, sexuality, profanity, drugs). At the Lincoln Square, the Union Square, the Harlem USA.