Saw the movie yesterday, thought it was ok overall.
It took itself way too seriously compared to something like the F&F movies which don't take themselves anywhere as seriously. The first half-hour (or so) of build-up was just boring.
But once it got to the racing scenes, holy crap! These were seriously the most awesomely-filmed racing scenes that I've ever seen in any movie. The angles were crazy and the shots were just framed so kinetically it was amazing. There was a genuine sense of speed and sheer sense of motion that was just mind-blowingly awesome. The sound was really good too - from engines revving, tires spinning, etc. The continuous change in scenery was really cool too, from the beginning highway scenes to the wide-open Utah roads to the forested & coastal California roads. Sort of a film gaffe there - there was one shot undeniably set in Arches National Park in Utah (let's just say the movie showed one of its most iconic spots that any visitor would recognize) but it made no sense for Aaron Paul's character to be passing through when there's only one road into & out of the park (plus the park is also a 30-minute detour from the main highway, I-70).
The nods to the game series were actually sort of subtle but noticeable for a fan like me.
There were more than a few shots that resembled an in-car first-person view but because the camera angles were so routinely crazy in the movie, the first-person-esque shots came across as more natural that they might have otherwise and didn't take me out of the movie (as opposed to the first-person sequence in the Doom movie). It also really helped that the camera never sat still in first-person mode either and continued to move with the car to give the impression of a real driver looking around.
Overall probably a 2.5-star movie but for the racing scenes alone, 5 stars! They were just so amazingly done it was mind-blowing. It was a nice change from the F&F movies to see genuine-looking sports cars here (as opposed to F&F's muscle cars), and I liked how they threw in the police-chase aspect from the games too. Not sure if it's a spoiler to say, but it was awesome to see the police get a few "wins" in, particularly when a lot of illegal-racing movies show the cops as inept and horribly slow in their cruisers.
I saw it in 3D too, which did help the immersiveness a bit, but the sound blew me away more than the visuals did. My theater had ETX which made the cars sound especially loud & dynamic.
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