Fast Five

The Fast and the Furious series keep going. This afternoon, Jeanne, Michelle, and I caught a screening of Fast Five. It’s now a heist movie with cars. Think The Italian Job but with American and Japanese muscle cars instead of those dinky little Minis. The gang gets together for a job to steal the money of the biggest drug lord in Rio de Janiero. Assembling the crew for the job became a family reunion of sorts with practically everyone from the previous installments showing up. There is even an attempt to focus on the characters, e.g. someone’s pregnant.

But who am I kidding? It doesn’t matter where they are, what they’re doing, and what the human drama is. The whole point are the cars. And cars are still the best thing about the series and this movie. There are cars aplenty: Italian cars, German cars, Japanese cars, and, of course, American cars (but no Korean?). The stunts are over the top and I sometimes chuckled about the ridiculousness of it all. But by the end of the movie there’s no denying I had fun.

It’s worth mentioning that the next best thing about this movie would be the matching up of Vin Diesel and The Rock (known as Dwayne Johnson these days). With those two musclebound antagonists, you will expect testosterone tussle and in this the movie does not disappoint. The tension when the two face off is palpable and when they start throwing haymakers and each other around you could swear the whole cinema shakes.

Rating: 3/5