New Breed of Fast & Furious

Rating: 9/10 (12 April 2017)

Ah, the film that kicked off the new breed of Fast & Furious films, Fast Five. The film that gathered all of the fan favorite characters from previous films into one gigantic ensemble. Throw in Dwayne The Rock Johnson and you have yourself what may be the best the franchise will ever be.
I've had a hard time ordering which F&F film is actually the best/my favorite. 5,6, and 7 all are tremendous. They know exactly what type of film they are and what type of film they're not. Perhaps Fast Five takes the cake for being the first to truly embrace the ridiculousness of the franchise. Even with the previous film, there was a little bit of tone deaf at times with the writing. However, Fast Five takes the series to a whole new level in terms of tone, characters, and even genre.
In many ways, this was a soft reboot for the series. Essentially, the characters become superhuman with qualities they just didn't have before. As far as I'm concerned, Tej was never a tech genius, Mia was never able to hack into police scanners, and Roman was never scared of anything. All of those were added in to service the story they wanted to tell in Fast Five. You know what? That's completely fine by me. A soft reboot was exactly what these films needed. If that was what we needed to do to have the characters pull off an insane heist and have a blast doing it? I'm all in.
The Rock (aka franchise Viagra) adds another layer to the film as well. Gone are the days where Dom & Brian are going after one another. Now, you have 260 pounds of pure muscle going after the entire crew, and boy is it worth it. Not only is it mind-blowingly entertaining to watch Diesel and Johnson fight, Johnson actually brings a lot to the role of Hobbs. These movies have always been keen on establishing an inner code/morals for each character, and Hobbs' code works well alongside and against Dom's. Apparently, the role was originally going to be Tommy Lee Jones, but I can't imagine anyone better than The Rock to play him.
Much like the previous film, Fast Five does a great job of reestablishing past relationships, developing new ones, and doubling down on the action. This series is half about family and half about how insane each stunt and action sequence can be. By this point, they nearly abandoned the street racing part for the heist angle, and it works. Heck, even the one time they do have a "race", it's entirely off-screen. Fast Five is the epitome of what the series has become and I'm not sure a film has matched the incredible pacing and contagious chemistry between the ensemble.
+Enter, The Rock
+Dom vs Hobbs
+Doubles down on emotion & action
+Soft reboot serves the series well
-Even if some of the character changes don't make much sense
9.5/10