Fast Five

Fast Five (2011)

78% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 175 reviews)

Runtime: 130 minutes

Directed by: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, The Rock, Joaquim de Almeida

From: Universal

Here is something I wasn’t actually expecting to see, at least not for awhile. After all, I’ve only watched the first two movies in this franchise, the first one being entertaining and the second one less so. I’m not a fan of the idea of “boy racers” goofily modifying their Honda Civics or Mitsubishis with nitrous or whatever to race each other; I’ll never understand it and that’s why for a long time now when I’ve seen a vehicle like that I say that the car was “The Fast & The Furious’ed”. Yet, when this film came out it got really strong reviews not just from critics (shockingly enough) but from action fans on various messageboards who usually don’t care for this kind of movie.

But, as AMC is doing a deal until Thursday the 6th at its IMAX joints where for only 7 bucks you can watch this, Star Trek, and Inception. Not a bad deal at all. I decided to take the plunge and watch it that way. This proved to be a wise decision.

From remembering the two movies (and reading what happened in the last one via Wikipedia) it wasn’t too difficult to follow this. This wasn’t really about cars like earlier in the series and instead this was basically a heist movie, which is fine with me. To try and not spoil too much, the familiar gang end up in Brazil and they do a job for cash. Things go awry and for revenge they go and target an evil drug dealer and his cash (de Almeida, looking like a mean Brazilian Mario Andretti); as those guys are wanted fugitives of the law, the U.S. sends some Diplomatic Security Services guys, led by Hobbs (The Rock) to get them back. All three fight with each other and its wild stuff and it’s never boring.

Overall, I have to say that while I usually don’t care for movies that go way out to be absolutely preposterous and ridiculous, in this case it’s just that this may have been the most ridiculous movie I’ve ever seen! Yet they went balls-out and due to how entertaining the cast was (I’m sure they had a blast while making this) I actually got into all the impossible things I was seeing and my brain took a vacation as I went along for the ride. At times it does feel rather long but otherwise it was a story which wasn’t boring and you ended up rooting for a bunch of people who were on the wrong side of the law.

The movie looked great in the IMAX format. To be honest, I didn’t mind looking at Gal Gadot (a very nice-looking gal, for sure) in that format either. The action was fast-paced and yet for the most part was actually easy to follow and wasn’t that shaky-cam crap. Rio (or rather, Puerto Rico standing in for Rio) looked very scenic; and of course there’s a lot of action to witness. The last 20 or 25 minutes of the movie… totally devoid of logic, but pretty amazing to watch nonetheless. I can see why a lot of action fans want to see director Lin helm big projects in the future.

I tell you, it’s obvious that there’s going to be a sixth in this franchise. Besides the outrageous amount of money it made at the box office, I did stick around to see the teaser at the end of the first part of the end credits. I understand that’s about as ridiculous as everything else, but now I’m actually looking forward to watching the sequel… and even watching all the movies in the franchise, including the third one with Sonna Chiba apparently dressing like a pimp and the oldest kid from Home Improvement.

By the way, how can I hate a movie which either as a code name or as his real name has the Korean guy named Han Seoul-Lo? Now there is a pretty awesome messageboard name for people to use.

I’ll be back probably around this time tomorrow for my next review.