FASTER IS BETTER IN PERFORMANCE-CAR MOVIES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A single letter separates drive from drivel.

This month's high-octane performance-car thriller, ``The Fast and the Furious,'' doesn't exactly succeed at maintaining stopping distance between the two. But compared to such wretched recent examples of the genre as ``Gone in 60 Seconds'' and ``Driven'' (only one letter different!), ``F&F'' is a mere fender bender as opposed to an inseparable, twisted steel smash-up.

Directed by Rob Cohen (``Dragonheart,'' HBO's ``The Rat Pack'') and based on a Vibe magazine article, the new movie is still pretty idiotic. Some illegal L.A. street racers are supporting their habit of turning Hondas and Volkswagens into muscle cars by hijacking trucks at high speeds, which is a dumb way to do it but very cool to watch.

An undercover cop, Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), infiltrates one of the racing teams in order to find out which group is doing this. But as evidence mounts that it's the very crew he's joined, the young detective grows to like both the pneumatically armed leader of the pack, Vin Diesel's Dominic, and Dom's sultry sister Mia (Jordana Brewster).

Bad policing, that. But how can Brian not be enticed by the world Dom and his cronies operate in, at least as Cohen presents it? From their shimmering paint jobs and fetishized spoilers down into their nitrous oxide injection systems, the customized cars are mechanical lust objects of the most seductive order. And even on the off-chance that they don't do it for you, the races - held in industrial districts during the unpopulated wee hours, usually just a few gear-shifts ahead of spoilsport cop raids - attract a multiethnic array of beautiful young women, none of whom apparently owns a top that reaches her belt.

Of course, there are a few downsides to this supercharged lifestyle. Competitiveness among the various racing teams spills over into violent gang rivalry; a Vietnamese squad led by the stylish but dangerous Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) is particularly fond of settling pink-slip controversies with automatic weapons. Small fortunes can be lost by a misjudged clutching or a microsecond's slip in torque. And of course, even though this speed-crazy film is reluctant to acknowledge it, these kids could drive themselves into hamburgers at any given moment.

While hardly any of the above behavior approximates recognizable human experience - and attempts to imply ``dimensions'' for some of the characters by having them explain formative traumas play equally as false - what puts ``F&F'' out ahead of the pack is that delirious infatuation with velocity. Combining clever special effects, shrewd cinematography and sharp editing strategies, Cohen and company repeatedly succeed at putting the rush of acceleration up on the screen. And as so many other pictures have proven, that's a particularly difficult task to accomplish within the two-dimensional film frame.

Telling a plausible story about this world would seem less of a challenge. Evidently, though, that's one race no one in modern Hollywood has the slightest idea how to run.

``THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS''

(Rated PG-13: violence, language, unsafe driving)

The stars: Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Rick Yune.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Rob Cohen. Written by Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist and David Ayer. Produced by Neal H. Moritz. Released by Universal Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 47 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

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Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel in the high-octane ``The Fast and the Furious.''