Great: 9.0

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2019)

The Fast and the Furious series has, both to its credit and detriment, always stuck to its guns. The series has always been about one thing: racing fast cars driven by faster women (or is it the other way around?). This approach worked for the first movie because it was a different approach to the action genre, a B-movie exploitation thriller wrapped up in an A-movie shell of well-known actors and colorful special effects. After four of these movies, however, I don't think anyone will disagree when I say that the formula got more than a little old, culminating in the frankly dreadful Fast and Furious. Well, no longer. With series newcomer Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and director Justin Lin leading the pack, the series has been transformed beyond the scope of its ancestry and into the strange new world of the B-movie thriller. One of the main problems with the franchise is that they all took themselves too seriously, always refusing to let themselves go, and thus remaining chained to what had gotten the series moving in the first place. Fast Five makes the long-overdue decision to drop over the edge, and emerges as the first truly great entry of the series, surpassing even the original in terms of sheer filmmaking quality. Justin Lin has some serious balls to change what had kept series diehards coming back. There is only one race scene, one. There are quite a few fight scenes to replace the racing, though, and these are pulled of in a gloriously over-the-top manner matched only by the Grindhouse films begun by Robert Rodriguez. Like those films (and unlike Fast 2-4), Fast Five fully embraces its ridiculousness and just runs with it. There are far more practical, realistic ways to do just about everything in this film. It would, of course, be more realistic to stop, then board, the bus carrying Dominic Toretto rather than somehow managing to make it flip by touching a 1970 Dodge Charger. Would it be as entertaining? No, probably not. There are many such scenes in this movie. It would take too long to go into detail on them, but suffice it to say, there are more than enough of them to make this film far and away the most entertaining of the series, as well as the funniest. Part of the fun of this movie comes from the so-bad-it's-goodness of the dialogue and stunts. Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson and Vin Diesel create a singularity of testosterone that makes any scene with them together an unmissable spectacle. And Johnson...is...good. For one of the first times in cinema history, The Rock fits into his role, and becomes a truly screen dominating figure. Unlike most action movies these days, this film focuses on the characters just as much as special effects, and makes you lean forward in your seat as they get closer to death, as opposed to sitting back to enjoy the pretty lights. This movie seems so overjoyed to be free that it seems to be too much of a B-movie at times. There are musical notes that rise to a fever pitch just before lines are spoken, there are Mexican standoffs aplenty, and the dialogue itself is entirely too cliched at times ("We need to assemble a team"). But this adds to the humorous side of the film, making for a multitude of genuine laugh-out-loud moments that help break up the intense action scenes. Between the dialogue and the explosions, the movie is paced extremely well, and never once will you be bored enough to turn your eyes from the screen, and if you do do this, then you're probably in the throes of mirth by that point. Besides the gonzo action sequences, this films draw is the actors, as almost every major character from the past F&F film makes an appearance here. The stars fit into their roles quite well, with each one adding their own special touch to a scene, be it a joke, quip, or intimidating glare. Overall, these characters seem more human than they did in the previous films, and this helps you get investing in their conversations and actually wanting to hear what they have to say, rather than just tuning it out, waiting for the next punch to be thrown or fireball to be ignited. This is the perfect film to open the summer floodgates with, and should not be disregarded solely on the basis of its less-than-impressive siblings.