Review: In "Fast Five", Director Justin Lin and a cast spanning the last five Fast and Furious movies combine to bring us the best film in the series.
In the very first sequence of Fast Five, former federal officer Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) slams on the brakes of his muscle car, and a bus slams into it at an angle. If you are a fan of physics — or just happen to live on this planet — you can guess what should happen. If you guessed that the muscle car would be obliterated, welcome to the human race. If you guessed that the car would cause the much, much heavier bus to flip over spectacularly, then welcome to the world of Fast Five.
It is with this intro that you are given the rules to the universe of the film you are about to watch. At every bend, there is a casual disregard to the laws of nature; almost a “take that, physics” approach to life. And that is fine. The Fast and Furious series is an escapist fantasy. We watch the $100,000 cars driven by beautiful women and tough men, then we jump in our beat up Civics and station wagons and drive home, probably a little faster than we should. You don’t want to put too much thought into the logic of it, and honestly, reality would only get in the way of enjoying this series.
But a bigger issue for the franchise than just its propensity for flipping off science: How do you keep a series fresh after five outings? There are only so many ways to race, and explosions can only get so big (although don’t tell that to Michael Bay). The answer is that you take what works about the series and shift it subtly into a new direction that is original, but doesn’t feel alien to the franchise. That is what director Justin Lin has done by making Fast Five into something of a traditional “heist” movie. And it not only helps to breathe life into the franchise, it helps to deliver the best movie of the series to date.
The fifth Fast and Furious installment picks up exactly where the last movie ended, with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) on his way to prison while O’Conner and Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) lead an assault to free him. After the rescue, O’Conner and Mia, both very much in love, head to Rio to rendezvous with Dom, and end up staying with Vince (Matt Schulze), the stereotypical “angry guy” from the first film. He has a job for them, and when Dom shows up, they all head off to steal cars. Off a train.
Things go bad quickly, and after a physics-be-damned style escape, the group is being hunted by the resident kingpin of Rio, Herman Reyes (Joaquin de Almeida), because of something they accidently took with them. Mia soon admits that she is preggers, which inspires Dom and O’Conner to eschew running from the forces closing in on them, and instead pull off one massive job that will set them all up for life and cripple Reyes’ operation. But to pull it off, they need a team.
The team is a collection of the Fast and Furious all-stars throughout the years. From the second film 2 Fast 2 Furious, Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) return. From the third film The Fast And the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Han Lue (Sung Kang) appears. From the previous film, Fast & Furious, Tego Leo (Tego Calderon), Rico Santos (Don Omar) and Gisele Harabo (Gal Gadot) fill out the crew.
Unbeknownst to the super friends, an elite DSS agent, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is on their trail, and with the help of local Rio officer Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky) and a group of highly trained agents, he sees it as his duty to bring them all to justice.
In terms of continuity, here is the strangest part of the film. Fast Five is the fifth movie in the series, but like its predecessor Fast & Furious, it takes place before the events of The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift which is last film in terms of continuity. The only reason to do this is to include Sung Kang’s character of Han, who died in the third film. Now, Han is a good character, and Kang is undeniably a charismatic actor, but it feels a bit like buyers’ remorse than anything else — the producers obviously regret having killed him. It doesn’t make any difference to the story to have Tokyo Drift set in the future, but it might confuse some.
For this series, the change to the heist theme feels natural and right. Fast Five is in many ways closer in tone to movies like The Italian Job, or even Ocean’s 11 than it is to the previous films in the series. In fact, there is very little racing at all in the movie, and only one extended driving sequence at the end. It was a fairly bold move at that. There is one scene where a car race is about to happen, but it skips the actual racing to further the plot. While it is somewhat counterintuitive to say about a franchise based around fast cars, impossibly beautiful women and the like, the series has actually matured. At least a bit. While there is still a ton of ridiculous action, it is not thrown in just to look good, it all serves a purpose.
Each of the characters has a part to play, and while it is always hard to stand out in an ensemble cast, the actors all compliment each other and mesh surprisingly well. In fact, it is something of an accomplishment in itself to have so many big name stars work together, and that is a testament to Lin.
You can almost feel the growth of Justin Lin into a solid action director over the course of the last three Fast and Furious movies. Lin has always had an eye for action, even when he was just starting out and filming on next to no budget with films like Better Luck Tomorrow. As he has learned and grown as a filmmaker, the way he frames scenes has drastically improved, as has his eye for color and aesthetics — something that was at times an issue in the previous film. It’ll be interesting to see where Lin goes from here. Hollywood is currently in love with him, and he is attached to direct the next Terminator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, so his name may be one that you hear for years to come.
The rest of the crew turns in solid preformances as well, and you can almost feel that they had a good time making this movie. Despite the intense action, this is a movie you are meant to have fun with, and having actors enjoying themselves is important in selling it. Perhaps the most difficult role to play in the film was also perhaps the best cast—that of DSS Agent Hobbs, played by Dwayne Johnson. On paper, the role is fairly bland. You have a dogged federal agent that isn’t particularly funny or likeable, trying to stop the antiheroes that you have become invested in after four previous movies. Johnson is, and always has been undeniably charismatic, and few can convey as much without saying a word as he can. It was an inspired casting choice, and further proof that Johnson deserves the success he has earned. A less actor in this role could have killed this movie dead and made an interesting plot line cringe-worthy. In fact, with so many moving parts in this film, any one of a handful of badly cast actors could have derailed the entire film, but it all works well.
Diesel again plays Vin Diesel, while Walker has nearly perfected the art of acting while looking perpetually stoned. Whether you love or hate them, your opinion probably won’t change much based on this film. But of the two, Diesel is unquestionably the focus, and so he should be. While Fast Five isn’t going to make AFI’s top 100 movies of all-time list, it is an entertaining film thanks partly to the performances that most will enjoy, as long as you don’t think too much about the details.
Fast Five isn’t high art, nor is it trying to be. There is so much testosterone in this movie that even women in the audience may leave with a mustache. It fulfills the traditional summer movie pre-requisites and has a ton of explosions, gun battles and fistfights, just like you would expect. In that sense, it is a very, very traditional film. If you are looking for that one unique snowflake in the snow storm of summer movies, this aint it.
It is, however, the best film in a series bred for its visual extravaganzas. Films like this can go three ways. They can veers towards the ridiculous, as they did with 2 Fast 2 Furious, they can repeat the same formula over and over as they did with the third and fourth films, or they can do something a bit ballsier and take the franchise in a different direction altogether. It doesn’t have to be a wholly original direction, just original for the series. In this case it worked, and likely saved the franchise. A sixth movie has already been greenlit, and while it might at first glance seem over saturation to film six movies based on an action franchise like this, the fifth movie has proved that there is enough life left in the series to justify it. It helps that Fast Five was already released internationally, and in eight days has made back over $30 million of its $125 million budget, so odds are it is going to do alright at the box office.
By the way, make sure to stay through the first block of credits to see a scene with a few surprises that set up the sequel.
While Fast Five isn’t the type of movie that will appeal to the art house crowd in even the smallest way, it is what it intends to be — a summer popcorn movie that is beating the other big name summer films to the theaters by a few weeks (or a week, counting Thor). If you enjoyed the previous films, then you will leave pleasantly surprised at how they have managed to resuscitate the franchise. The action is unbelievable — literally unbelievable — and physics take a punch in the nose, but the film does so with a wink and a nod to the audience, so you accept it. If you can’t, then you are in trouble.
For a fifth film in a franchise, Fast Five offers a slightly mindless, but fully enjoyable heist movie starring a cast of up-and-comers, borderline A-list stars, and directed by a guy who will likely be a household name in the future. Although it isn’t quite summer yet, Fast Five has begun the summer movie season on a good note.
(Fast Five is rated PG-13, with a running time of 130 minutes)
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