Evolusi: KL Drift Review
April 3, 2008 by Leon
Okay, for those of you not in Malaysia, today was opening day for this country’s very own high-octane drift film that goes by the name of Evolusi: Tokyo Drift. I’ve just come out of seeing the movie and I thought I’d voice my opinion on what I thought of the flick.
To start, the movie is unashamedly a tribute of sorts to FATF: Tokyo Drift, and it’s not just my opinion, even the director of the movie has been quoted as saying that himself. It was a wholly-locally produced event with a budget of RM2,000,000 (about $630,000 USD), which is quite high-end for a local production.
If you haven’t seen the movie just yet there may be a few spoilers in this post, so if you don’t want me to ruin the movie for you, cease reading here.
The movie centers around two friends, one a driver of the film’s hero R34 (Zack), the other piloting an S13 (Sham). There is also a hot chick played by the delightful Fasha Sandha, who at the beginning of the film is Zack’s love interest, but later ends up leaving him and having a crush-fling-thing with Sham, which of course causes all kinds of shit between the boys.
Theere is also a drug-dealing bad dude in the movie who ends up racing one of the guys at the end for honour or whatever…the kinda creepy thing was that in the movie he had what appeared to be a large swastika tattooed on his chest. And I know buddhism is big in this part of the world and I’m aware there is a buddhist symbol almost identical to the swastika except its prongs rotate anti-clockwise insetead of clockwise, but this guy was definitely sporting a swastika. So he’s an Asian white supremacist I guess.
So basically as far as the story is concerned, there’s some drama and all that, but I’m sure you want to know about the important stuff: The drifting.
I’ve got to say, as far as a lot of the driving scenes are concerned, I do respect them for what they did in this movie simply because there was not one bit of CG trickery like a lot of the scenes in Tokyo Drift. Although I doubt they’ll win any stunt-driving awards, they definitely deserve credit for that. Two scenes in the movie were a blatant ripoff of the scene in Tokyo Drift where Han circles the R33 with the two females inside, so it was a bit disappointing when it comes to originality.
The cars were good, but not what I’d call great. The main cars featured were an R34 GT-T, a GT-R badge sporting R33 GTS-R, a few S13 Silvias, one FD and a quite decent widebody S15-80 which was my favourite car of the story. In all cases the cars were OK, but I have to say the tacky vinyl graphics and stickers did let them down a bit.
So was it better than Tokyo Drift, the movie which coined it? No. So was it worse? Again, I’d have to say no.
While it wasn’t what you’d call a Hollywood blockbuster, it did have something simpler and more distinct which made the whole movie seem a little more believable to me. It had a few things that I’d say were an advancement over Tokyo Drift in the fact that they achieved a lot of what the higher-budget movie did with a whole less money - they both suck in different ways, but in their own ways they’re also worth a watch.
So, it’s a movie about turbocharged cars sliding around corners, and if you like that king of thing then it’s worth a look.
-Leon.
