Fast Five

Fast Five; action, USA, 2011; D: Justin Lin, S: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris bridges, Matt Schulze, Sung Kang, Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot

Dominic is about to be transported to a prison, but his sister Mia and friend Brian crash the bus with the convicts and free him. They also steal cars from a traveling train, but Dom and Brian are captured by criminal Reyes who wants to know the location of one specific car with a microchip in it that contains data about the drug lord's money. Brian, Dom and Mia then escape to Rio de Janeiro and decide to to escape Reyes' persecution by teaming up with Han, Roman, Tej, Gisele and others and steal Reyes' money. At the same time, agent Hobbs works with the Brazilian police to arrest Brian and Dom. Dom and his team break into the police station, attach the vault with Reyes' money and escape with cars. A car chase ensues in which Reyes is killed. Hobbs gives Dom a 24 hour break to escape. Brian and Dom split the money and enjoy their exile.

Part five of the long and hyped "Fast and Furious" action film series was probably the first contribution that amounted to a good film, managing to somewhat lift itself up from the routine chase sequences, even though the writing and dialogue is still often dry, ordinary and conventional. The convoluted plot takes a while until it agrees with itself where it wants to go, but once it does, it sends the franchise outside the usual car races and instead turns it into a heist film, offering a few interesting new elements that give it freshness, whereas it also helps that the plot does not take itself too seriously, often resulting in amusing irony. One of the best examples is when Gisele (excellent Gal Gadot, who is especially responsible for adding more charm to the cast) walks towards criminal Reyes in a bikini and sits on his lap, whereupon he touches her butt. However, later on, it is revealed Gisele did that only because she had a special layer on her bikini which captured Reyes's fingerprints, which her team intends to use for the heist, which is amusing. The final 10-minute chase sequence in which the two cars are dragging a giant vault across the streets of Rio de Janeiro, which sometimes smashes into cars and walls during the street curves, all the while being pursued by police cars, is great and almost reaches the insanity of "The Blues Brothers" in its sheer comic destruction. The simplistic storyline was thus saved thanks to a few new ideas, as well as by performances of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.

Grade;++