Scale, size and speed all cranked up to the benefit of "Fast Five"

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2017)

The acceleration period of the "Fast & Furious" franchise is officially over. Now it's all pure speed.
"Fast Five" pretty much blows the roof off of all previously held notions of what these movies are and could be. The action, the stunts, the cast — everything is bigger. With director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan returning from "Fast & Furious," the creative sensibilities are all the same, so clearly the $40 million in additional budget had a big role to play in the finished product.
Audiences handsomely rewarded "Fast & Furious" at the box office; in "Fast Five," they reap the benefits. Never before have so many cars, trucks and trains been pulverized into scrap metal on the big screen. The stunts are simply huge. (I'd say grandiose, but this is the "Fast & Furious" franchises after all.) Morgan and Lin get the green light to do whatever they can imagine. Even if what they dream up doesn't make sense, it's fun to watch.
Other than financial freedom, Morgan in particular has a lot more freedom of story. The unusual circumstances of the franchise's beginnings (i.e. Vin Diesel turning down the second film) created a recovery period of sorts. "Fast & Furious" had to bring Diesel's Dominic Toretto and Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner back together and reenergize fans of the 2001 original; "Fast Five" had a blank canvas. The usual tropes of these movies have been minimized and some passed over completely. It's a much looser and more fun movie.
Surprisingly, the entire movie takes place in Rio de Janeiro. O'Conner and Mia (Jordana Brewster) have fled there after breaking Dom out of federal custody by flipping a bus of prisoners on a desert highway. That's the film's quick open. Dom is in Rio as well, and they all meet back up to pull off a job that will keep them on their feet. Only the job (boosting cars off a moving train) doesn't go quite as planned, and they have irked another powerful drug lord named Reyes, who "owns" Rio. They've also caught the attention of the FBI, who's sent its best man-hunter, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) to bring them in.
Morgan can't quite free these movies of the criminal good guys vs. law officer bad guys dynamic. On the plus side, at least it's no longer about whether or not O'Conner is going to do his job or throw it all away to help Toretto and co. He's firmly on their team now. On the other hand, you can imagine that the same war of conscience might befall Johnson's Hobbs and the woman he's picked as his sidekick, Elena (Elsa Pataky).
"Fast Five" also brings back some old faces: "2 Fast 2 Furious" stars Tyrese as Roman Pierce and Ludicrous as Tej, as well as Matt Schulze, who played Vince in the original "The Fast and the Furious." Add Sung Kang as Han from "Tokyo Drift," and Gal Gadot, Tego Calderon and Don Omar from the last movie and you have a massive ensemble with which to play-act "Ocean's Eleven." That's essentially the model for this movie; all the characters have special talents and they're going to pull off a heist to take down the biggest boss-man in Rio. The characters also fit certain stereotyped roles, but that figures.
Pretty much all criticisms of the plot and story mechanics become meaningless once Dom and O'Conner start speeding through the streets of Rio towing a gigantic safe in grand finale. The physics are questionable, but the movie stands out on the ingenuity of this action sequence alone, one that serves as an apt metaphor for this film series' reckless, bulldozing, couldn't-give-a-damn attitude. The "Fast and Furious" movies continue to ride comfortably in the seat of mediocrity, but they get to do it on the grandest stage yet in "Fast Five," and that ratcheted-up entertainment factor helps sway this movie into more favorable territory.
~Steven C
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