On the streets of Tokyo, speed needs no translation.

The Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift is the latest instalment of the adrenaline-inducing series built on speed. Set in the sexy and colourful underground world of Japanese drift racing, the newest and fastest customised rides go head-to-head on some of the most perilous courses in the world.

Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) is an outsider who attempts to define himself as a hotheaded underdog street racer. Although racing provides a temporary escape from an unhappy home and the superficial world around him, it has also made Sean unpopular with the local authorities. To avoid jail time, Sean is sent to live with his gruff estranged father, a career military man stationed in Tokyo.

Now officially a gaijin (outsider), Sean feels even more shut out in a land of foreign customs and codes of honour. But it doesn’t take long for him to find some action when a fellow American buddy, Twinkie (Bow Wow) introduces him to the underground world of drift racing. Sean’s simple drag racing gets replaced by a rubber-burning automotive art form – with an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a heart-stopping course of hairpin turns and switchbacks.

On his first time out drifting, Sean unknowingly takes on DK, the “drift king”, a local champ with ties to the Japanese crime machine, Yakuza. Sean’s loss comes at a high price tag when he’s forced to work off the debt under the thumb of ex-pat, Han (Sung Kang). Han soon welcomes Sean into this family of misfits and introduces him to the real principles of drifting. But when Sean falls for DK’s girlfriend, Neela (Nathalie Kelley), an explosive series of events is set into motion, climaxing with an ultimate high stakes face-off.