Brian O'Connor (Walker) is fresh from the original, though minus his police badge, the L.A. location and any co-star with drawing power. He's also utterly unconcerned with keeping a low profile as he opens the film racing for cash. How an unemployed ex-cop manages to own and maintain a $100,000 vehicle, we have no idea, but it doesn't seem to stop any of the other hundred mechanics and fast food employees who join him, so maybe such questions are irrelevant.

Like most sequels, the film spits out copies like a Xerox machine after a lightning strike. Caught by the cops, O'Connor agrees to help the Feds catch a money-laundering baddie named Carter Verone (Cole Hauser) by impressing him with his driving skills. Brian's hip, urban friend Roman (Tyrese) joins in the fun, along with undercover cop Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes), who's so undercover that audiences will mistake her for pointless eye candy until one of the film's characters establishes her purpose with the following line: "She's deep undercover." Real deep, apparently.

What has happened to the career of John Singleton? One minute the guy is debuting with "Boyz N the Hood" and being hailed as the next Spike Lee, the next minute he's helming leftover sequels and amusing himself by making the street racer's use of nitrous look like Captain Picard going to warp on mescaline. If movies were cars, "2 Fast 2 Furious" would be a Yugo.