Fast Five (2011)

Fast Five (2011)

6/10

Starring

Vin Diesel
Paul Walker
Jordana Brewster
Tyrese Gibson
Chris "Ludacris" Bridges
Matt Schulze
Sung Kang
Dwayne Johnson
Gal Gadot


Directed by Justin Lin

This is my favorite of all the Fast and furious and the only one I didn’t doze off while watching.

I am not a fan of the fast and furious franchise, not one bit. I always catch myself dozing off while watching them. It's ironic because this franchise is iconic for its intense races and out-of-place action scenes (in my own opinion) but its painfully plain characters make me bored and make me doze off.

What do all the fast and furious movies have in common?

Daring car stunts, car chases, and of course the fore mentioned pointless action scenes. Fast Five isn’t any different. But it's the first fast and furious I watched (and finished) without dozing off. The laws of physics are totally suspended in this movie, with cars moving sideways, people surviving some weird accidents and let’s not talk about the vault (I'm sure you've seen the trailers).

The movie starts with Dom (Vin Diesel) in a bus on his way to a 25 years sentence in prison. But, of course, his old partner/nemesis O'Conner (Paul Walker) and his sister, O'Conner's girlfriend Mia (Jordana Brewster), manage to break him out as seen from the previous movie in the franchise.

They head to Rio (Brazil) and O’Conner and his girlfriend get involved in stealing a car from a train for a Mob Boss. This is done with stunts that makes you wonder “hmm..., they really think am stupid”. So the plan went bad of cause and the Mob Boss was pissed and sent gangsters after them.

 
Also let’s not forget the FBI being pissed about the jail break and sends some die hard muscle pumping men to bring them in. This crew is headed by Hobbs Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson.

The characters are given a certain level of depth I don’t feel they had before. Vin Diesel and his unmistakable gravel voice (which should have a casting credit all to itself by the way) was just off the hinges, and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson was wonderful. He made the movie for me with his awesome goatee. The humor in the movie was a total miss in my opinion.

The movie script has a part where Dom had to steal money. So Justin Lin probably went to the nearest video store and got the whole Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13 films and decided to do the same.
So our protagonist assembled a team of so called specialists, (previous characters from the films) typical to the Ocean’s 11 setting.

Justin, you better get it right next time, because I have never seen a heist go wrong like this, the movie should be nicknamed ‘How Not to Perform a Heist’.

The movie lacked the car racing scenes that seems to plague the other franchise but this is the best I have seen of the Fast and furious franchise.