Fast Five has great chases, but a mediocre story.
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The fifth entry in the Fast and the Furious saga continues its trend of cutting words from the title and allure from the plot. Although, it should be obvious that seeing Fast Five for the story is akin to watching A Clockwork Orange for its comedy. While it doesn’t have much of a plot, the action scenes are perfect. Throughout Fast Five My senses were joyously bombarded during every chase and fight scene, which seemed to occur within at least ten minutes of the previous one.
The usual characters, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel, Fast and Furious), Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker, Takers), and Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster, Chuck) are back behind the wheel. Fast Five begins with Dom on a convoy to prison to serve a 25-year sentence. Naturally, Brian and Mia rescue him in a driving sequence that culminates in a large bus flipping onto its side and barrel-rolling its way through the air, eventually coming to a hard landing. This scene, like all of the other action in this movie, was very well shot. The camera wasn’t too close to get lost in the action or too far away to make the crash look like toy cars in the hands of little children.
After freeing Dom, Mia and Brian go to Rio De Janeiro to hide from the US Government. Due to unexplained circumstances, Dom isn’t there yet. They meet up with Dom’s brother, with whom Brian doesn’t get along. He tells them about a “job” that could help them; moving some cars. Since Brian and Mia need the money, and this job appears to be safe to do, they take it. Knowing that this is a Fast and the Furious movie, nothing is ever this easy.
Dom and Mia move cars off a train using strong winches attached to a flatbed vehicle designed for off-road work that drives next to the train car. Somehow, Dom shows up with the crew taking these cars. According to a plan that isn’t explained, Mia takes a Ford GT40 to a private garage and leaves Brian and Dom to fight off two henchmen who got wise. Long story short, the car has a list of addresses stored in the memory chip of the fancy touch screen stereo. These are houses owned by the man who runs the city, a wealthy and corrupt businessman named Reyes. Reyes doesn’t trust anyone with his money, so he keeps it as cash in these houses stored all over the city.
On the hunt for Dom and his crew is Luke Hobbs, a U.S. Agent out to get them played by an unusually intimidating Dwane ‘The Rock’ Johnson (The Other Guys). That pits The Rock against Vin Diesel, causing some sort of paradox where two equally tough guys are forced to act cool and in charge all in one movie. All laws of cinema aside, Hobbs makes a good hunter: Nothing stops him from catching his prey.
Reyes wants his Ford GT40 and its data back, so he sent his men to kill who stole the car and get it back. After narrowly escaping from Reyes’ henchmen, Dom wants revenge, so he cooks up a brilliant plan to rob Reyes. Dom is after all of Reyes’ money, which adds up to around $100 billion, and he assembles his old crew. Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges reprises his role as Tej, and uses some special skills other than signaling the ‘go’ flag as he did in previous Fast and Furious movies. Five other characters that had roles in the previous films show up for roll call and help Dom rob Reyes.
At this point viewers may have noticed a similarity here, a ghost of another movie in the background. Breaking someone out of jail, assembling ‘the old team,’ and robbing someone’s money from a safe all ring bells that had been rung before. Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels shared these elements, but wait! Fast Five has cars, so it must be…The Italian Job! Pretty close, except for a couple of differences. These guys are professional drivers who want revenge on a personal level.
After the money in one of the houses is burned, Reyes has it all moved to a vault in a police station. After replicating the layout of the parking garage, the drivers see that the cameras in there will always catch them. So, like any thief would do, they scrap the plan of sneaking into the station and formulate a new one. Using an armored car, they smash through the wall of the vault room. Then two matte black, Dodge Chargers tether themselves to the safe and yank it out of the police station. They take it with them on a rampage on the way out of Rio, smashing pursuing cop cars, nearby buildings, medians, and parked cars in one of the most awesome and ridiculous chases in movie history.
Fast Five is full of action, and that’s not a bad thing. The plot is stable, but intense chases and vehicular carnage more than make up for the lack of a moving story. The action is nearly nonstop, and only slows down for the story to try to catch up. The tense moments of the film were during the chases as opposed to plot-related moments, and I’m okay with that. Fast Five will take viewers on a thrilling ride in the passenger seat, complete with crashes, chases, and fights.
★★★★☆
