So the thing about this movie is, it’s from 2001, right. And it turns out that a way to make any popular movie better is to not watch it for twenty years, at which point it becomes an absolutely fascinating time capsule of what culture was like at this point in history.

So you get things like Nextel push-to-talk phones, looking at paper maps for directions while driving at 140 mph, and people boosting DVD players and combo TV/VCR players (both of which are worth approximately $0 today).

(But ironically, the Panasonic packaging that the DVD players were in is almost identical to the packaging on the Panasonic 4K Blu-ray player that I watched this movie on. Multiple layers of retro!)

But most of all you have the car culture here, which… I don’t know, I don’t really pay attention to this stuff in a real way, but it does feel to me like this was a bigger thing back then than it is now, all the modding and the hot hatches and the like. I assume this show was always ridiculous, and even at the time was documenting a thing that didn’t exist in the way this movie imagines it to, but it somehow still feels nostalgic for that turn-of-the-century tuner energy.

This movie should be terrible, but it’s not — it ends up being 60% high-energy driving sequences, 20% found-family energy, and 20% pure cheese. I can’t exactly recommend it, but at the least I’ll say that I don’t disrecommend it. If you think you want what this offers, you’re unlikely to be disappointed.

ALSO ALSO: When one big piece of subtext in your movie is that a main character is sus because he’s white and the different gangs are different ethnic groups, calling your racing event “RACE WAR” is a little on the nose.