Fast Five

My Grade:  B-

Fast cars, beautiful people, and exotic locations... sounds like a Fast And Furious movie.  The fifth installment in this high octane franchise, not-so-cleverly named Fast Five, is not a film that is expected to garner a lot of critical acclaim; however, there are people that live and breathe for this franchise.  It may not have been up for any Oscars, but Fast Five wiped up at the 2012 World Stunt Awards winning 5 Taurus Awards and being nominated for three others.  Among the Taurus awards this film took home were Best Fight and Best Work With a Vehicle.  It also picked up the Teen Choice award for Action Movie of the Year.  Not bad for a movie that relies almost exclusively on coming up with new things to do in car chases.

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) and Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) are back for another job... in beautiful Rio De Janeiro.  This time, though, they have to deal with an extremely dangerous drug lord, Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), who wants to kill them AND a disturbingly driven federal agent, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), who also wants to kill them.  This particular job involves stealing all of Reyes' money which he keeps in heavily guarded safe houses throughout Rio De Janeiro.  For this job, O'Connor and Toretto have to pull out all the stops.  And they have to get everyone from all the other movies involved including Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Ludacris), Gisele Harabo (Gal Gadot), and many others.

As usual, the plan is very intricate with twists and turns and it seems impossible.  Everyone almost gets caught, but they find a way to continue with the plan which leads them into the streets for a massive car chase to end the film.  You already know the plot, but this one involves different cars, different streets for the car chase, and extra shootouts.  It's quite the guilty pleasure film.

As much as you don’t want to enjoy Fast Five, you can't help but get caught up in the adrenaline rush of it all.  Males will especially love it because of the fast cars and hot women.  For the ladies, though, there are a lot of attractive men with big muscles.  Can they act, though?  Not really.  This franchise is filled with famously mediocre actors.  Fast Five is no different with the emotionless pair of Paul Walker and Vin Diesel leading the way and making the bad acting and wrote delivery of lines very apparent throughout the film.  In defense of the actors, however, the dialogue that Chris Morgan has written for them is not exactly the kind of dialogue an actor can really sink their teeth into.

The bad acting doesn't actually make the movie too much worse, though, because it ends up being rather funny at times.  The film is already ridiculously over-the-top, so the cheesy dialogue and emotionless delivery of that dialogue actually adds to the campy charm of the film.  The reason these things are forgivable is that the action is amazing.  The chase scenes are beautiful, the fights are tense, the shootouts are often, the explosions are a lot of fun, and the cars are fast and sexy.  That's all audiences expect from this film, and that's exactly what audiences get.  And the final chase scene is surprisingly original.  Just when you didn't think there was anything new to do in a car chase, O'Connor and Toretto strap a safe between their two cars and tear up the streets of Rio De Janeiro... pretty awesome! 

Overall Fast Five is an action-packed thrill ride with forgivably cheesy, emotionless dialogue and is a lot of fun.  It also gives fans of the franchise a chance to see all their favorite characters work together in one film.