A couple of years after letting Dominic Toretto go and losing his job as a result, ex-cop Brian O'Conner scrapes a living in illegal street races. Or at least, he does until the FBI come looking for an expert driver to help them in a sting operation against drug lord Carter Verone. Now Brian's going to have to try and stay one car length ahead of both Verone and his supposed employers, at least if he wants to stay alive and out of jail. Good thing the authorities let him pick his own partner, since at least he can rely on boyhood friend Roman Pearce. I mean, that whole grudge over letting Roman go to jail, and Roman's general hot-headedness, surely won't be a problem ...
2 Fast 2 Furious begins as it means to go on: very silly. It's an affably goofy film which merrily dispenses with even the halfhearted hand-wave to plausibility that was offered by its predecessor. It definitely suffered a bit from the loss of Vin Diesel (who chose to do Chronicles of Riddick instead), because Paul Walker didn't have the same on screen presence or off screen buzz of Diesel, but on the plus side it led to the creation of the Roman Pearce character and thus Tyrese Gibson's debut in the franchise. Gibson's a fine on-screen talent. It worked out pretty well for him, too: I doubt his bank balance has ever regretted taking this role.
At the end of the day, this is definitely one of the lesser entries in the Fast and Furious franchise, but it introduces Roman, as well as Ludacris's character Tej, both of whom will be central parts of the series from here on out.
Well, except for the very next film. But let's not get to Tokyo Drift until we have to.
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