Writer: Nor Inayah Ariffin

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Watch this if you liked: "Impak Maksima" and "The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift".

For those of you who watched "Impak Maksima" and were disappointed by the dodgy-looking stunts and a lack of truly drool-worthy cars, "Evolusi KL Drift" will fill that void nicely. Director Syamsul Yusof (who also stars in the movie as Fasha's maniacal jerk of a boyfriend) made sure he had all the goods to give you a smashing good time at the cinema. After all, it is one of the most expensive productions so far under Skop Productions, and a huge chunk of the RM2 million budget went into ensuring that proper cars like the Skyline and RX7 were used in the film.

As Syamsul's directorial debut, this movie is a very promising start to what could certainly be a very successful career in showbiz for him. The opening theme song, and in fact most of the music throughout the film, is slick and pumping in the style that today's teens (and the target audience) know and love, and very fitting to the whole feel of the movie. The cinematography is respectable and is perfect for such an action film, with suitable camera angles and techniques. Overall, the whole feel of the film is polished and pleasing, if not slightly vacuous as well.

Despite the fact that most of the cast members did a stellar job in portraying their characters, there wasn't much room for them to develop further than the stereotypes they depicted. While Fasha was genuine and delivered a performance with good timing, she was always angry and teary-eyed throughout the film, with a smattering of laughs and smiles here and there. Farid Kamil too did well, but seemed too good to be true, and at the other end of the spectrum, Aaron Aziz's character seemed too tough to be true. Still, such characters occur not only in local films but international ones with multi-million dollar budgets, so this is forgivable.

Syamsul himself, who plays Fasha's boyfriend Zack, was by comparison quite wooden, and his character just came across as a bloodthirsty bully who deserves no sympathy. Eye-candy Diana Danielle is gorgeous, but her acting leaves much to be desired. Playing Fasha's best friend, she is always serene and calm throughout the film no matter what is happening, like someone high on drugs.

The editing of the film is slightly choppy and in parts makes some scenes end awkwardly, and as usual, the dubbing isn't first-rate either - a problem that plagues Malaysian films endlessly. However, the sound quality is good for the most part, and better yet, the action scenes are positively brilliant. The choreography of the drifting is extremely good... in fact, a bit too good, because it ends up feeling like a stunt show and not an actual race on the roads of KL taking place. Everything is too coordinated and it loses the gritty realism that it tries to achieve, but then again, it is awesome to watch and certainly the drifting scenes are the best part of the movie.

Still, that is about all the movie has to offer at this point. There are no scantily clad, bodacious babes as it is a local production, so all we have to drool over are the cars, really. While there is a storyline going on about love triangles and rivalry, the audience really only cares about the cars and who wins the ultimate race. Any attempts at drama are half-baked and predictable, but one thing I have to give this movie props for is that there is no formulaic happy ending. We never truly find out what happens with the love triangle and a lot of questions are left unanswered, although this was possibly done to allow for a sequel to take over from there. Who knows? In the meantime, this is a film to be proud of, and hopefully Syamsul will keep on trying for bigger and better things.

Cinema Online, 23 September 2008