Fast Five

Universal Pictures came out with a little action/marketing flick called “The Fast and the Furious” in 2001. Little did the executives know of the pop culture icon they were creating, inspiring suburban kids to put Spoilers and neon lights on their compact cars. All jokes aside, the film was a big success, and three more sequels were spawned to make teenagers rush back to the cineplex. Ten years later we come to “Fast Five”, and it’s the best of the franchise.

“Fast Five” is great because it doesn’t just have one star to root for. This film is a reunion of the stars of each previous film including Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, and Sung Kang. They are all in Rio de Janeiro on a collective mission. See, Brian and Mia are on the lam after springing Dominic from jail, but have no money to start with. They are roped into another car robbery on a high-speed train with Brazilian bad guys. On the train they pull out with the cars, but three American DEA agents are shot in the process. Dominic arrives to save Brian but not before meeting the gangster who set them up: Hernan Reyes (Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida) who has all sorts of money laundering houses set up in the city. As the men escape and regroup with Mia, they devise a plan to steal that money from him. As the international team is assembled and all the money is moved into a military-guarded vault, things only get tougher when an American DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) shows up ready to kill them all. Enemies on all sides and no hope of escaping jail, can the “Fast Five” pull it off? Of course they can.

There are many great action sequences here, including a bank vault being dragged on the street by two cars and whipped around like a tetherball. Cars aside, the thought of seeing Diesel and Johnson, two of the biggest and manliest actors since Schwarzenegger, beat the crap out of each other is a welcome sight. We even go into some brief soap opera when Mia announces to lover Brian that she is having his child. Men will cream for the souped-up cars and babes in skimpy outfits, while women will drool for the gorgeous hunks on screen. On the other hand I didn’t like the lead villain, who seemed to come straight out of a Saturday-morning cartoon. Also, the actual heist seems more inspired by “Ocean’s 11″ and strangely out of place.

“Fast Five” just plain kicks ass, and for the average movie going audience that’s enough. In the theater I expected to see 16-year olds obnoxiously texting on their phones and shouting at the screen, which did occur. However, there were also plenty of older audience members who just came to enjoy a good action flick. I encourage you to do the same.

P.S. You need to stay through the ending credits!

1. Daily wrote:

   April 30, 2011 at 11:46 am

   the movie was so bad ass i cried.

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