Fast Five Review

After suffering through three F and F’s, semi-enjoying the 4th, it was finally time to ante up and go see Fast Five. No lie, I was actually excited.

I was ready to suspend my sense of reality with unbelievable action, unreal stunts, atrocious dialogue, overly-contrived one liners, gratuitous female ass shots, a NOS Cameo, a fairytale heist plan, Vin Diesel’s arms, Paul Walker’s boyish charm, the back from the dead Asian Guy, LUDA, Tyrese’s pathetic attempt to act, and a way for them to push Fast (and hopefully final) 5 into Fast six. Oh and I was ready to rekindle my man crush with the The Rock.

Let’s just say, I was not disappointed one bit. Every one of my expectations was fulfilled. Was it a good movie? Not in the Oscar sense. But was it a crowd-pleasing, action packed, shit show? Yes, and that’s all it needed to be.

It was easily the best of the Five. Filled with references and inside jokes from its predecessors, Five took everything you had come to enjoy in the series and wrapped it into one– the cheesy, one dimensional characters, the egregious plot lines, the car action and more.

The heist was an Ocean’s 11 homage to be sure.

With two characters, literally playing out the Casey Affleck/Scott Caan relationship to a T. Watch both, then tell me that they didn’t rip this off.

Come to think about it, everything about the heist is Oceans-esque, even the grand aha reveal at the end. I’m assuming most of you haven’t seen the film, so I will avoid any spoilers except Vin Diesel dies. Only kidding. Or am I? I am. Maybe. Go see it and find out.

The Rock is worth the price of admission on his own. You can tell the director told him “Just be The Rock. A badass federal agent Rock,” and that’s what he did, only toned down a bit. He didn’t drop the people’s elbow or a Rock Bottom, but he did rack up the highest body count in the movie.

In other words, Finally, The Rock has come back (for the first time) to layeth the smacketh down on these Rio de Janeiro candy-asses.

But of course, there were bad things too.

When they bust Diesel out of the prisoner transport bus, where 4Fast4Furious left off, the bus rolls over like 10 times. 10 EFFIN TIMES! There are no casualties. WHAT? None? Not one? Who is writing this? The people who brought us the Care Bear Movie? Anyway, I laughed. My expectations were too high. This was nothing new, it is F and F after all.

The Asian Guy who died in Tokyo Drift, the same Asian guy who regenerates with no explanation in 4, re-undeads (made up word) himself in 5, AGAIN.

The problem here is not that he’s back, but that it takes the movie until the last 3 minutes to explain this flaw. Then it’s only explained in one cryptic line. One LINE!

Then we finally know, Tokyo comes after 5.

To recap, the creators of F and F count like this, 1-2-4-5-3. Does that surprise anyone that they can’t count? No, but they sure can count their $83 million they made in the first weekend.

Next crazy thing– In one of the early scenes, Paul Walker jumps from a speeding train onto a speeding car. Fine.

Then he is hanging off the back of the car, when they run out of road and catapult into a huge gorge.

Fine.

Here’s the thing that had me laugh out loud in the theater: during the slow motion fall, Paul Walker is able to pull himself up to stand on the trunk of the car still going more than 100 mph– think windsurfing– to prepare himself to jump off the car before it hits the water.

Literally he is standing on his car, which has hit terminal velocity, and he looks like this is something he’s practiced, oh wait.

That’s not all, there is a ton of other stuff that I’m going to hold off on because I don’t want to ruin the movie for you.

But go see it, this is by far the best mix of cars, action and unintentional comedy that the F and F series has brought us.

Oh, and watch the credits. Let’s just say that there’s another person that might be undead in six. And there will be a six.