Posted on Thursday, 28th April 2011 by Declan Palazzi
Not quite as boneheaded as its precursors, “Fast Five” is part “Grand Theft Auto,” part “Mission: Impossible” and more ridiculous than ever.
The fifth installment in a series that began in 2001 with Rob Cohen’s breakout hit “The Fast and the Furious,” the film reunites Vin Diesel’s gravel-voiced, street-tough Dominic Toretto, Paul Walker’s former cop Brian O’Conner, Jordana Brewster’s willowy Mia, Tyrese Gibson’s fast-talking horn-dog Roman Pearce, Ludacris’ mechanical genius Tej and Brian’s former rival Vince (Matt Schulze).
In typical opening scenes, three cars manage to knock over a speeding prison bus transporting Dom to Lompoc prison for a long stretch and send it tumbling like a beer can in a wind tunnel, although we are later informed by a news crew that there are “no fatalities.” Huh?
Dom and his friends re-assemble in Rio de Janeiro, where the statue of Christ holds out his arms in greeting over the city, even the favelas are beautiful and they become involved in a botched car robbery and get implicated in the murder of three U.S. DEA agents.
This causes the feds to send the inevitable “elite task force” headed by muscle-bound, heavily armed giant Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson, new entry to the series) to Rio to catch the fast and furious fugitives.
The plot further involves the baddest bad guy in Rio (Joaquim de Almeida) and our heroes’ plan to rob him of everything he has in a bold heist.
As always, the action combines buff bods, sculpted sheet metal, testosterone, guns, bone-crushing throwdowns, tattoos, revving engines and a “Transformers”-like delight in having as many things as possible smash into each other: cars, trucks, motorcycles, an 8-ton safe that two cars impossibly drag down streets at high speed as if it were made of cardboard (it probably was) and human flesh and bone, although few people get hurt that we can see.
In one scene, lovers Mia and Brian leap what looks like 100 feet from a rooftop, crash through corrugated iron panels to a floor and emerge literally without a scratch.
I know a “Fast and Furious” film is not supposed to be believable, but a nod to realism would at least make it seem like something genuine and human is at stake. But no.
Diesel remains an interesting mix of thug and father figure. Johnson, who looks terrific in his goatee, must deliver the worst of the goofy, testosterone-intoxicated dialogue by screenwriter Chris Morgan (“Wanted”), but he does it in yeoman fashion.
I have my complaints about these wildly popular “Fast and Furious” films, but at the same time I acknowledge that they are, like many of our much better films, one of our greatest exports, which is why there is such a market in pirated versions. These films may be robustly anti-intellectual and deplorably commercialized, but they are the envy of the rest of the world.
(“Fast Five” contains gun-related violence, profanity and sexually suggestive language.)
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