Not a hint of realism...

Rating: 6/10 (29 April 2011)

Now, this movie had its strengths... and its weaknesses... First off, great acting. All actors were superb. Good action scenes, nice action shots and cinematography. The script was a bit shabby.. But I need to vent about my main issue with this title... It doesn't have any realism in the movie at all. None.
First example: A car drives in front of a bus, they were going fairly fast but it should not have had THIS outcome.. The bus hits the back of car. The bus is then propelled 20-30 feet into the air, lands, and is ripped to shreds. No fatalities either, and somehow they snuck an inmate out from the scene of the crime without a soul knowing about it. The bus flying through the air from a minor collision like that is what really angered me.
Second example: An all-terrain vehicle speeds along next to a train. Not only does it stay with the train for a good 10 minutes in the exact same spot without any trouble adjusting to the trains speed, but it is clamped on with enough stability that a team of 2 can use plasma cutters to cut a wall large enough to smuggle a car out of. I liked the idea, but it wasn't put together properly. To make things worse, after a few cars are smuggled out, a final car, with about 2 feet of room to gain momentum with, had enough speed to make an enormous leap off of the train and land perfectly with smooth sailing the rest of the way. This is followed by two men in the car flying off of a cliff large enough to kill anybody landing in the water below. In the real world, limbs would have been lost. They land like it was nothing.
Third example (this takes the cake): An armored vehicle plows through the walls of a police station.. I'm okay with this. Two Chargers pull up, chain themselves to this 10 ton vault, and have enough traction and friction to pull the entire vault off of the wall and out of the building. In a real world situation, the cars would make no progress and spin out, or the chains would break... and they take off! Speeding through Rio with a 10 ton vault, wrecking down buildings, smashing cars, dodging people, and smashing everything else in sight. This really irritated me. It even went through a large concrete building, the chain being strong enough to tear the building apart. I have no clue how this is even plausible. The vault then flies around smashing everything in its path again, still being pulled by these two wimpy cars. Eventually, the police catch up. The drivers suddenly have the dexterity to move the vault and fling it to their will. They smash some more cop cars, cause more collateral damage, and then decide they are going to split up. One Charger takes the vault on its own, and another takes off in the opposite direction. This solo driver suddenly has even more dexterity, and flings the vault around some more, taking out cop cars left and right, killing people exactly how he "planned it". Like I said earlier, if you are pulling a vault the size of a building around in a solitary car, the tires would not have enough traction to continue, and the car wouldn't have enough horsepower to drag that monstrosity around.
It goes on and on, I wish I could actually watch this movie without those three examples. It would be great. I loved the rest of it. But, save all this junk for a sci-fi movie... I can stand small amounts of movies being non-realistic, there are exceptions.. But not taking realism into consideration at all is a bit of a downer. Apparently physics don't apply to anybody living in Rio De Janeiro.