Heading Down to Rio de Janeiro

Rating: 5/10 (23 April 2017)

This film takes up where its predecessor ("Fast & Furious") left off with "Dominic Toretto" (Vin Diesel) being hauled away in a bus on his way to prison. However, before Dominic can be transported to his destination his sister, "Mia Toretto" (Jordana Brewster) and the former undercover agent named "Brian O'Connor" (Paul Walker) intercept the bus and rescue him. Knowing that they cannot remain in the United States any longer the three of them head down to Rio de Janeiro and resume their usual operations there. Not long after arriving they team up with an extremely corrupt politician named "Reyes" (Joaquim de Almeida) who then attempts to double-cross them. Fortunately, Dominic is prepared for this and skillfully manages to turn the tables on Reyes by escaping in a special car which has a valuable computer chip that details Reyes' entire operation. Needless to say, Reyes wants that chip back at all costs and immediately sends his men to capture Dominic and his crew so that he can interrogate and subsequently kill them once he has it. What nobody realizes is that a special agent has been sent from the United States named "Luke Hobbs" (Dwayne Johnson) who also has orders to capture Dominic and Brian as well. To that end, neither Reyes nor Luke Hobbs are easily deterred. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that--while this was definitely an entertaining action film--it suffered from one major flaw in that it had too many high-speed stunts which were simply too ridiculous and improbable to be believed. It was just too much. Be that as it may, I liked the addition of Dwayne Johnson who definitely added something extra to the film. Likewise, having three attractive actresses like Gal Gadot (as "Gisele"), Elsa Pataky ("Elena") and the aforementioned Jordana Brewster certainly didn't hurt either. That being said, even though this movie would have been much better if the director (Justin Lin) hadn't gotten so carried away with everything, it was still an okay sequel and I have rated it accordingly. Average.