Even Christopher Nolan Loves ‘Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift’
— Updated on 27 November 2023

Even Christopher Nolan Loves ‘Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift’

— Updated on 27 November 2023
Garry Lu
WORDS BY
Garry Lu

While you’d assume that professional filmmakers, auteurs at the top of their game, are ultra-selective snobs when it comes to the cinema they consume, the God’s honest truth is they’re just like the rest of us ordinary dweebs – in search of digestible and often-times mindless entertainment. Forget The Birth of a Nation and whatever obscure flick Jean-Luc Godard is pushing based on its supposed “artistic merits”. As it turns out, the king of high-concept himself – Christopher Nolan – digs a bit of the The Fast & The Furious. Particularly Tokyo Drift.

“I’m sort of an original recipe [guy],” the Inception director admitted on MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast.

“I mean the Rob Cohen original [from 2001]. But I’ve got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift, actually. And then the skill as [director] Justin Lin’s iterations… as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun.”

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christopher nolan fast furious tokyo drift

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“The fun thing about those movies is even as they’ve gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as sequels have to do – everyone always complains that sequels get bigger but we’re the people making sequels get bigger, we do want them bigger, you don’t want them smaller.”

“It’s the Alien 3 lesson that [David] Fincher learned. You can do it but it’s not going to make anybody happy, even though personally I love that film… a lot more than he does in fact.”

The third instalment of the franchise starring Sung Kang as Han Lue and Lucas Black as Sean Boswell copped a critical (and commercial) beating during its initial release, and currently retains a rather humble IMDb score of just 6/10. Tokyo Drift, however, has amassed a cult following and become something of a fan favourite since. Plus if it managed to convert Christopher Nolan into becoming another member of the Fast & Furious familia, it certainly isn’t a movie to write off.

Justin Lin has returned to the director’s chair for Fast & Furious 9 – otherwise known as F9 – originally scheduled for international release on May 20th of this year before being pushed to April 2nd in 2021 (for obvious COVID-19 related reasons). And yes, as we reported a few months prior, Dominic Toretto & Co. are actually headed to outer space… potential Interstellar x FF crossover film?


There’s more where that came from. Find out what we’ve ranked as the best Al Pacino movies of all time, the best Christopher Nolan movies of all time, the best Denzel Washington movies of all time, the best Ryan Gosling movies of all time, plus the 101 best action movies of all time.

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Garry Lu
WORDS by
After stretching his legs with companies such as The Motley Fool and the odd marketing agency, Garry joined Boss Hunting in 2019 as a fully-fledged Content Specialist. In 2021, he was promoted to News Editor. Garry proudly retains a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, black bruises from Muay Thai, as well as a black belt in all things pop culture. Drop him a line at [email protected]