Friday, April 29, 2011

 

Fast Five

Fast Five Even I dislike cars in general, I enjoy director Justin Lin's previous two energetic films "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" (2006) and "Fast & Furious" (2009) that contain plenty street car racing scenes. His latest installment of the fast and furious series is an action packed entertaining "Fast Five" (USA 2011 | 130 min.). Although the word "furious" is dropped from the title, the film is nothing short of being furious.

Picking up from the last scene in the preceding "Fast & Furious," "Fast Five" opens with a spectacular escape sequence when Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is on his way to prison. The rescuers are Dominic's sister Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) and her boyfriend, a former federal agent Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), both driving incredibly fast, of course.

The trio hides out in Rio, Brazil. But, the hiding doesn't last long. In nothing else, this movie needs to get moving with non-stop actions. The "last" job they want to do is to steal three fancy cars. That job not only brings federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) to Rio to arrest them, it also leads them to confront a drug lord Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). They assemble a team that represents almost all the ethnicities listed on a US census form. The team's mission is to get all of Reyes's money that is stored in a state-of-the-art giant vault, and then disappear forever. They call it a "mission freaking insanity."

Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Paul Walker, and Sung Kang in Fast Five

Director Justin Lin is brilliant at choreographing the most jaw-dropping actions on the big screen. Even you think you have seen all the car chasing scenes in movies, yet he can show you remarkably new and fresh tricks in this film.

It's expected that not every detail is convincing. For example, if two small modified cars can have the horsepower like a tsunami, we may not see any truck on the highway any more. When Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson roll around on the floor, they look like playing in a pro-wrestling match, only with more clothes on, instead of in tight undies—it can't be more obvious that they are just putting up a show.

However, that does not make this film any less enjoyable, because the point of this film is to entertain the audience with what they come to this film for: fantastic action sequences, mindless violence, comic characters, pro-wrestling hunks, and very fast cars.

Handsomely, the film delivers just that thrilling ride. Nothing less, nothing more.

"Fast Five," an Universal Pictures release, opens on Friday, April 29, 2011 at Bay Area theaters.


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