Just Ate my Own Words.

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2011)

The 1970 trailer for the biker classic, Hell's Belles summed it up perfectly: "Hip chicks with an itch for the kind of action that takes a lot of manï»¿ to scratch!" That same mentality prevails in all of the F&F series and as I've always said before: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
In my Thor review, I slated Fast Five without seeing it; and now, I stand here before my legion of fans, holding my head (and spiky bonce) in shame. They say that no one talks about Fight Club, true. But when it's Fast & Furious, remember one thing: Leave your brain at home and set your motor to auto-cruise. Hey, I'm even 100% sure that NASA's finest could figure out the logistics and physics of cutting open the side of a fast moving train, but this is what F5 does: It's so ludicrous that you just have to give up and suspend disbelief until you come back to reality (haha, I made an Inception joke there, nice!) Fast Five does what it says on the poster and doesn't allow you to breathe a lot. Within 5 mins of the opening scene, we see Vin Diesel's Dom, being rescued by his family (whilst he's in a moving prison vehicle no less!) And a credit to the writers, they shift gears as quickly as they can and take us to Rio De Janeiro (yes, not a CGI city, but actually Rio, no orange Macaws plugging 3G crap, thank God!) What we then get after, is a fairly sane plot of a corrupt official Reyes (the always cool Joaquin De Almeida) who seems to have more money than God. After this Kingpin kills a member of the wannabe Ocean's 11 crew, Dominic wants revenge as only he knows how! Except, he didn't bargain on Special FBI bounty hunter, Hobbs (Dwayne The Rock Johnson). As Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner says: "Vey Old Testament". Say what you like about wrestlers-cum-actors, but DJ is better than 50 Cent, in that he actually took acting lessons and is the best thing about F5. In fact, Vin Diesel has been in this franchise for a while now, and wisely takes a back seat for the Rock and his motormouth do the talking. And this is what I liked: We're promised a showdown with 2 behemoths (albeit 3, if you count Vin's belly). While I do like the Bourne films, those frigging quick cuts in the action is off putting; but here, Justin Lin keeps it old school and even out does the Expendables and its constant clumsiness, by giving us a solid beat-down between the Tooth Fairy & XXX. It's A-Team style, punch-em-in-the-face with no suplex in-jokes. The Rock is in phenomenal shape and twice the size of Diesel (I for one, cannot wait until 2012 when he does a one-off reunion with WWE and takes out John Cena!) The women in F&F have 2 purposes: They're good wheel drivers and wield wrenches for self-defense. On the other hand, the ones who aren't allowed to speak on camera, simply let their finely tuned asses and over-the-crotch hot pants do the talking (not that I'm complaining you understand)...Gisele (Gal Gadot) is a skinny chick with balls and needs to eat more burgers if she wants to convince Sports Illustrated, she can cut it on their front cover. Elsa "Tacky" Pataky is good as Elena, the cop with a "nice smile" and wished she'd been in a bikini instead. But as always, my heart goes to Jordana Brewster as Mia. She'll never win an Oscar (like she gives a rat's ass!) but remains as beautiful as ever (and appeared in season 2 of Chuck, so clearly she has taste).
There was great interplay with the rest of the cast too, especially with Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Chris Bridges) and their schoolboy put downs. And with a movie that takes itself seriously with action and very little CGI, a smattering of humour is always welcome in my books.
A few observations I noticed: Had Dominic Toretto and his motley crew watched Top Gear UK, they would've known that a TVR is the only car that could beat a speed camera (duh!) Also, don't even tell me that no-one has played Modern Warfare 2, because anyone who has (veteran, cough!) will be familiar with the Favela chapter and here, it's brought to the screen with some real ferocity, right down to the roof top chases. And just to reinforce the demographic F5 is aimed out, look no further than Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, which they clearly emulated in the last 20 mins. And there were 2 other moments I cried (the first being Elena) - Mia driving a GT40 and Dom's 1970 Charger getting crushed (noooooo!) And if you're going to acquire the top sports car in the Western Hemisphere, at least have the decency to grace us with a band of attractive women to double the viewing pleasure! As my good American cyber friend Ashley said: "Stick around after the end credits". F&F6 is on the cards; but F5 could've tied-up its loose ends very neatly. I gave this movie 5/5 because it's F for Fun and after you leave, you'll think you've just been on the best amusement park ride, ever! Whether Justin Lin is the right man for the Terminator reboot is debatable - (don't get me wrong, I'm happy for the Far East Asian brother to hit the big time, and that Sung Kan gets a love interest who's out of his race!) but if Justin himself can contact me, we need to sit down and do some serious talking!