For the third film in the series, The Fast And The Furious accelerates at breakneck speed to the streets of Japan, where scantily clad teens delight in the white-knuckle thrills of drift racing.

Tyres smoke, rubber burns, heavily customised cars rev their engines while MC Hammer, Pharrell Williams, N.E.R.D., Atari Teenage Riot and The 5.6.7.8's blast from the sound system.

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift delivers all of the high speed, adrenaline charged thrills that we have come to expect, including an edge of the seat chase through night time Tokyo.

Cameras linger furtively on the gleaming bodywork and throbbing exhausts, and every now and then, thanks to slick computer trickery, we hurtle inside the engine to see pistons working overtime to keep the racers at top speed.

However, the tongue-in-cheek humour and the sense of fun, which oiled the cogs of the first two films, is almost entirely absent here. The cast plays the roles with deadly seriousness and laughs are perilously thin on the ground.

Thank goodness for the surprise coda, which reminds us of how preposterous all this auto-related male posturing is.

Working from a flimsy screenplay by Chris Morgan, director Lin puts the pedal to the metal in the action sequences, including lots of slow motion skids and crunches.

The narrative unfolds with few shocks or surprises, culminating in a frenetic race down a twisty mountainside course.

Lucas Black is clearly at least five years too old to play high school student and speed freak Sean Boswell, and the Japanese students handily speak English rather than their native tongue.

There's more sexual chemistry between Black and his car, than with newcomer Kelley, but then you'd expect nothing less from a film which combusts with excitement at the sight of a buffed bonnet.