For the uninitiated, 'drifting' is the feat of cornering a car in a controlled skid without slowing down.

To the consternation of the boy racers on Mount Akina, young Takumi (Jay Chou) has unwittingly mastered this Zen art while out delivering tofu in his dad’s ageing Toyota.

The rival teams spend a lot of time and effort customising their wheels and even more on coming up with cruel taunts like "Your car's a scrap."

Of course, it could be "Your car's crap", but not being fluent in Cantonese, I can't vouch for the accuracy of the subtitles.

When 'Tofuboy' (another searing barb) sees off the leader of the ultracool Night Kids, everyone with a provisional licence wants to depose the new 'Racing God of Mt Akina'.

Takumi is championed by his tubby friend Itsuki, whose father owns the filling station in which they work. Itsuki sports a Hitler haircut, is rather coarse and vomits a lot.

All the fuss drags Takumi's father out of his drunken stupor. Before he embraced a life of cutting tofu, drooling over young girls and falling flat on his back, the old bum was a former 'racing god'. He has a sudden attack of family honour.

While his dad tinkers with the car, Takumi does likewise with wide-eyed Natsuki (Suzuki), the apple of his eye who turns out to be slightly rotten. But never mind her, there's a race to be won.

Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs trilogy was densely plotted and always intriguing, specifications sadly lacking in this internal-combustion affair.

The four-wheel action consists of countless repetitive and unthrillingly edited set-ups, freeze-frames and slo-mo, shot from uninspired angles. Top Gear does it better.

The movie's weak dramatic tracks are covered by a pounding soundtrack "specially composed by street bass and auto styling experts Fuel". Auto styling experts? I'd have hired musicians.

Reasonably fast but far from furious, the Initial D experience is like watching someone else messing with a PlayStation. Very tyresome.

Elliott Noble