Guest Review: FAST FIVE

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are back in this fifth installment of the hugely successful Fast & Furious franchise. Also, back in the action are the surviving characters from the previous films. The story picked up right after where the last film ended. Dom (Diesel), Brian (Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) are now fugitives and on the run. They’ve decided to hide from the authorities in Rio de Janeiro and reunited with an old friend, Vince played by Matt Shulze, he’s from the first movie. They’ve decided to pull a job for a very powerful drug dealer, Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), but it went sour so they’re all on the run from him too. Also, hot on their tales are Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and his team of hard-nosed federal agents. After the big news from Mia, Dom and Brian decided that they can’t keep running forever, so they hatched up a plan to steal $100mil from Reyes and to do so they need some help. In come their fellow buddies from the previous films.

Yo, The Rock ready to rrrrrrumble!

The film started out just like the other Fast & Furious films, crazy over the top stunts and lots of speeding sports cars. But after the big action opening sequence, the film slowed down just a bit so all of the team members could get some good screen time. We get to see how they’re planning to steal the money and some personal moments shared by the love interests in the film. To be honest, I didn’t mind these slower moments even though the dialog and acting were pretty average at best. I do wish they’d paid more attention to The Rock’s character but he’s just there to be the second antagonist to Diesel’s character. The big fight scene between the two big men was pretty great; I have to say it’s one of the best fight scenes I’ve ever seen on a film.

I enjoyed this film quite a bit; it’s a perfect summer flick. Of course don’t expect much more from it, as I mentioned before the dialogs were pretty weak and the acting wasn’t that great either. I think Paul Walker needs to go back to acting school or something because he was bad in this film, good thing he didn’t have much to do but drive and shoot guns. But you don’t go see these kinds of films for acting or dialog. You go see them for the action, and boy, did director Justin Lin delivered.

“If you jump, I jump!”

If there’s an Oscar for stunt coordinators, the guys who staged the action sequences in this film deserved it. There were some great set pieces, particularly the big chase near the end of the film. It was probably one of the most ridiculous over-the-top action sequences I’ve ever seen since the motorcycle chase in Mission: Impossible 2. Diesel and Walker destroyed pretty much half of Rio de Janeiro’s highway and I loved every seconds of it.

I do recommend the film if you’re in the mood for some mindless action extravaganza. But if you’ve never seen any of the Fast & Furious films or if you’re just a pretentious film-goers (you know who you are), I advise you to stay away from it as far as you can. Also, for those who like their films to be more “realistic”, don’t bother because the stunts in the film aren’t what you called “realistic” at all. For everyone else who wants to escape from reality for 2 hours and see some nice sports cars and good looking guys & gals, this film is for you.

3 out of 5 reels

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Well, anybody else saw this movie this weekend? What did y’all think?