Fast Five (’11 review)

2 outta 5

There’s nothing inherently wrong about being a pure action exercise, and most action movies like Fast Five open strong and deliver a big finish, but there’s still very long stretches to fill.  Aside from those two sequences most of the action is more loud than exciting.  Add to it the characters are all kind of dull and it becomes a drag.  With this entry the series reinvents itself from car racing to a caper flick but it’s a caper without any spark.  That being said, the opening and closing action beats are really quite good.  So that’s like, what, 30 minutes?

Fugitives on the run Brian (Paul Walker), Dominic (Vin Diesel) and Dominic’s sister / Brian’s lover, Mia (Jordana Brewster) hide in Brazil to escape the wrath The Man.  Unfortunately, they run afoul of a local crime lord (Joaquim de Almeida from “24”) when they capture his MacGuffin.  The MacGuffin is a term for a plot point that the characters may care about but nobody in the audience does and in this movie it’s a particularly lazy microchip MacGuffin.  The lovable criminals have to dodge a determined federal agent, Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and cobble together a team of more lovable criminals so they can rob the crime lord.

Diesel and Walker have been in three Fast movies and by this point they at least seem to share a seen-it-all camaraderie but the characters are shallow.  The most development Walker’s character get is a moment where he recalls how his dad was never around.  As the biggest new addition to the series, Johnson is underutilized playing a muscular variation on Tommy Lee Jones’ character from The Fugitive.  The Rock, with a mysteriously disappearing and re-appearing Southern accent, can look menacing but he’s one note. Johnson’s done good work in movies like Southland Tales or The Rundown, so the fault lies with the script.

For a fifth entry in a series, this instalment is surprisingly new user friendly.  You get the hint of relationships from past films that provide a sense of history.   This movie does also display a problem of long-running series where the creators want to deepen the connection between two male co-stars, so they have one of them hook up with a sister of the other.  It makes them “brothers”.  Harry Potter does the same thing too when he hooks up with Ron’s sister.  In a particularly unnecessary bit of melodrama, Brewster’s character is knocked up at the start. 

With the focus on street racing toned down, one race literally happens off screen, the majority is about the heist.  They spend a lot of time assembling a team and having these complex descriptions of each character that mean nothing.  Example: a character by the name of Han (Sung Kang from the previous three films) pops up and is described as a “chameleon” who can help through the heist. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do a damn thing aside from eat chips and shout plot exposition from the side of the frame.  Tego Calderon and Don Omar add some humour as they bicker constantly but they are at the centre of an extremely unfunny gross-out exploding toilet bit.   Ludarcis and Tyrese Gibson return from previous instalments to get in a few quips and threaten to devolve to jive-talking stereotypes.  As for the supposedly main antagonist, Joaquim de Almeida growls a lot just like how he growled a lot when he was on “24”.   He’s disposed of in such an offhanded manner by then the movie itself has stopped caring about him.

The direction by Justin Lin is typically flashy. Subtitles in the film don’t just appear; they literally fly sideways into the frame and then zoom out.  You’re half expecting tiny “VROOM!” noises.  All, the action is unbelievable but that’s fine.  A prison bus is crushed on top of itself, which looks awesome, but “miraculously” no one is hurt. Uh, right.  There’s a well constructed action scene where the crooks are stealing cars from a moving train, ending with yet another spectacular explosion and car wreck.   Then the movie slows way, way down and aside from one or two shoot outs most of the time the crew screwing around planning the heist.  It’s deathly dull. 

Happily, the last 20 minutes delivers with yet another awesome chase where Walker and Diesel are dragging a giant safe through city streets, smashing the hell out of everything in sight.  It’s a lot of fun to watch.  You do feel a bit cheated because 70% of the movie is planning the heist and the payoff is them driving up to where the vault is and blowing something up.  The chase is badass but the actual heist is a let-down.  To be fair, there is an interesting twist at the end of it all. 

While watching two very fast cars dragging a bank safe that’s chopping cars and buildings in half is very appealing it does not make for a full movie.  This is a highlight reel and there are simply better action movies than Fast Five.