Fast Five -- Film Review

The Ninja

vs.

Fast Five

Ask for a general consensus, and no doubt you will be handed two of the strongest baits to the adolescent male: hot chicks and cars. Hence, it goes without too much to say that this combination will bring this flock to theaters. After all, it worked so well for Transformers (and the only plausible explanation as to how those piles of bile movies managed to score themselves a trilogy), and the main selling point to the Fast & the Furious series, from my understanding.

Truth be told, I walked into Fast Five cold-turkey, having never seen the previous movies before this one. While I was never a grease-monkey in any stretch, the appeal to high-speed vehicles wasn’t foreign to me. Alas, many times I had often found films whose premise greatly involve cars to be dull, unless the concept somehow included that these cars were equipped with some nuclear or some deviation of a high-energy reactor, dash into supersonic speeds, and screamed around on tracks that could make Hot Wheels pale in comparison; and why I was guilty for enjoying Speed Racer far more than my colleagues cared for. With at least some form of science fiction (or fantasy) element in place it allows any film in which daredevils are performing these otherwise impossible stunts seem less ridiculous than it otherwise should be. So when Fast Five expects me to suspend my disbelief that their cars, all that exist in reality, can pull the same stunts as the Mach Five and bend the laws of physics for sake of convenience, it’s asking a bit too much.  The film might have gone away with it had it not been guilty of doing this so liberally.

Can't touch this!

Now, with my lack of exposure to the series beforehand mentioned, it might come to no surprise how I would describe the plot to Fast Five to be a lukewarm, at best, and the players involved as convincing and memorable as cardboard cutouts. Of course who else could give this film an adrenaline shot in the arm other than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (who proves that his hard-as-nails wrestling routine still somehow gets him work in the film industry) as the FBI agent out to take ‘em down our heroes hard. You know he is hardcore about his job. Just look at his goatee! Oh, and he and Vin Diesel have a fight scene. I suppose that’s something. Not that the actual plot actually holds any minute interest, right? Sure, a story of a huge bank heist might be a tired-out concept, but this film has cars! Fast performance cars that can tear out a 10-ton vault clean from a building! Plus, there are babes!

Oh yeah, and Vin Diesel and The Rock duke it out! Why worry about the little details like meaningful character development?

Phew. That was a little much. Chances are, if you stuck around this long with the Fast and the Furious, you know what you're getting yourself into. And that's great, really. But with potential blockbusters like Thor and Pirates, you might want to hold off tickets to Fast Five for something better.

The Bottom Line: As high octane as the frantic car stunts and action sequences can get, Fast Five is a forgettable farce that fires on all cylinders and goes nowhere.