Fast Five - We Racing Or Talking?

(2011) ★★★☆☆

I didn’t see the previous four, but I might as well not, since it’s said that ‘Fast Five’ is the best of the lot. I checked it out mainly because I wanted to know how awesome Dwayne The Rock Johnson is as most of the critics say he is. It’s not a letdown though, with daring car chases and stunts there to entertain.

It’s set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a city of God but ironically full of perils since it’s basically run by a thug named Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), and everybody seems to have a gun in their hand. Here we meet Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker), who’ve been forced to escape all the way down here for reasons unknown to me, but no matter. In a car heist, they accidentally attain a computer chip that contains sensitive info about Hernan’s shadiness. He therefore sends an army to hunt them down. They then team up with some other talents to fight back by taking away all of his money at a police station.

Not only are there armed gangsters after Dom and Brian, there’s Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), an US DSS (Diplomatic Security Service) agent, and his teams as well. He’s got brain and brawn. He’s cool and intimidating. He speaks fast, acts fearlessly, and stares at his opponents like he does in the ring as The Rock. The one and only fight between him and Dom in the film is fairly awesome. He definitely steals the show from Dom and Brian, who come up with a ridiculously surprising move to pull a bank vault out of the police station in the end.

When going to see a film, to avoid disappointment, one had better not expect more than it could offer. A pure action film doesn’t necessarily need a story that makes sense, but it absolutely needs exaggerated actions to catch our eyes. And ‘Fast Five’ is a film like that.