Street racing provides an escape from an unhappy home and the superficial world around him, for outsider
Sean Boswell (LUCAS BLACK, Friday Night Lights), his reckless involvement in the sport has made him very unpopular with the local authorities and after one crash too many—and to avoid jail time—Sean is sent to live with his estranged father, a career military man stationed in Tokyo.
Now officially a gaijin (outsider), Sean feels even more shut out in a land of foreign customs and codes of honour. But after a fellow American buddy, Twinkie (BOW WOW, Johnson Family Vacation), introduces him to the underground world of drift racing—an exhilarating balance of speeding and gliding through a heartstopping course of hairpin turns and switchbacks—he’s hooked again, and back in trouble. Simple drag racing is replaced by drifting, a new rubber-burning automotive art form.
On his first time out drifting, Sean unknowingly takes on D.K. (
BRIAN TEE, Fun with Dick and Jane), the "
Drift King," a local champ with ties to the Japanese crime syndicate Yakuza. Sean’s loss comes with a high price tag when he’s forced to work off the debt under the thumb of another ex-pat named Han (SUNG KANG, Better Luck Tomorrow). However, Han soon welcomes Sean into his family of misfits and introduces him to the real principles of drifting.
But when Sean falls for D.K.’s girlfriend,
Neela (Australian newcomer
NATHALIE KELLEY), an explosive series of events is set into motion, climaxing with an ultimate high-stakes face-off against his nemesis. Punishment for the loser is banishment from Tokyo forever by Yakuza crime boss—and D.K.’s uncle—Kamata (the legendary SONNY CHIBA, Kill Bill: Vol. 1)…if they survive the race at all. Honour will be challenged and racing skills will be pushed to the extreme…with only one winner standing as champion.