WHO better to star in a car-chase movie than some shaven-headed dude by the name of Vin Diesel?

Mind you, diesel is mere salad dressing to Mr Diesel's moody and muscular Dom Toretto, who gets his kicks from fitting his hotrod with sufficient computer-controlled fuel injection power to blast him to the moon.

The Fast And The Furious has been the sleeper hit of the American summer, not that there is any chance of sleeping through Rob Cohen's louder-than-Slipknot piece of cinematic heavy metal.

Its success is as much a comment on another blank year for blockbusters as on the no-brains-required merits of Cohen's combustible amalgam of B-movie dialogue, Roger Corman thrills and even kitsch Grease posing.

Blond pretty boy Brian (Paul Walker), boasting of a track record for boosting cars, ingratiates his way into Diesel's car-racing gang who like nothing more than to block off the mean streets of Los Angeles for their private race track.

All wars on and off the tarmac revolve around the racer boys, be it Toretto's rivalry with an Asian gang led by Rick Yune or undercover cop Brian's quest for the truth behind a series of daring highway truck robberies.

Aside from Toretto's surly-eyed girlfriend (Michelle Rodriguez, reprising her punchy Girlfight act), no girls get behind the wheel, their only role to flash their midriffs and be sexual trophies: more smouldering toys for the boys in a Neanderthal throwback to action movies of the Bronson and Norris era.

Director Cohen pumps up the hardcore soundtrack and throws in more car action than The Italian Job, ensuring that The Fast And The Furious, ridiculous and over the top as it is, will be relished by boy racers and white van drivers everywhere. Not one for Jane Austen fans.