Vin Diesel is an interesting guy. First off, he’s proved, in such movies as Saving Private Ryan, Boiler Room, and Find Me Guilty, that he can act with wide range and sensitivity. And with his (usually) shaven head, muscleman body, and gravelly voice, he’s also a screen presence. Diesel has held together movies without much plot, such as xXx, and now three of the four installments in The Fast and the Furious series. Once in a while, Diesel the actor and Vin the presence have come together, as in Pitch Black. As he continues to mature, and polishes both halves of his talent into an integrated whole, his best work is probably still to come.

Meanwhile, he’s back as Dominic Toretto in the fourth F&F (neither Toretto nor Diesel appeared in the 2003 edition, 2 Fast 2 Furious). This one is no different from the others -- whether you love or hate the franchise (I love it), you know pretty much what to expect: Diesel as the seemingly indestructible Dominic, on the wrong side of the law as usual, but with a heart of gold still beating somewhere inside. He’s reunited with his sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), now a full FBI agent. O’Conner and Mia, a couple at the end of the first movie, have apparently drifted apart. This time, Dom and Brian set out to get some bad drug guys: Dom to get revenge on the man who killed his sometime girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Brian to do his job.

That’s about all the plot synopsis you need. Like the other movies in this series, Fast & Furious is really about fast cars, races, chases, and lots of female extras in bikinis. But those car chases -- and, this time, a chase on foot -- are thrilling enough to be worth the price of admission. The chase and action scenes in such films as Quantum of Solace, Transporter 3, and even The Dark Knight offer a lot of fury without much logic, and were edited so choppily as to leave the viewer dizzy with confusion. But such sequences in Fast & Furious are thrilling and clearly cut; they’re models that others could learn from.

There are also some awesome crashes, and a pulse-pounding if implausible chase through the tunnels of an old mine. These, too, are gorgeously filmed and perfectly edited. Director Justin Lin has fully captured the pulse of the original The Fast and the Furious (2001), and here has refined it to nearly high art.

Fast & Furious won’t win any awards for acting or writing, but it is genuinely entertaining, and projects an energy and appeal that few third sequels possess. It’s a popcorn movie in the best sense -- be sure to get some before you sit down to enjoy it.

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