crispy chomps
fast five - a “speedy” review
to begin with - before you think about watching fast five, make sure you watch the fast and the furious and 2 fast 2 furious (fast and furious, is optional; skip tokyo drift). without them, you’ll be lost as to who main characters brian o’conner (paul walker) and mia toretto (jordana brewster) are, and as to why they would want to break out dominic toretto (vin diesel) out of a prison bus.
after breaking out dom, the “crew” go at a job to steal some cars - but then they find out DEA agents are involved and the cars are seized property. after the heist goes wrong, and there are now dead DEA agents in rio, brazil, this moves DSS agent luke hobbs (dwayne johnson) to track down the trio in an attempt to bring them in to the united states to face multiple charges.
however, dom and brian get more than the bargain for when they take one of the hot cars - they discover a chip that reveals hernan reyes, seen to the brazilian people as a savior, as corrupt as those you can find on wall street. with almost everyone on his payroll, he starts to hunt down the trio, aggravating them, and getting them to pull their crew members from the past to pull off one last “mega” heist.
the movie, directed by third-time fast & furious expert justin lin, fits the formula perfectly for a summer movie - easy to follow story, tons of action, enough sexiness to keep you interested, and beginning-to-end action scenes to keep you all tensed up in your seat.
lin does a great job in keeping fast five what it is - an action car movie, that moves the plot along with its 130 minute running time. the beauty of the film is that it doesn’t try to be something it is not. the movie is also just long enough to get you excited for what summer has to bring, yet short enough that you don’t start wondering why the fast & furious crew just won’t die in a fiery burning crash. and, if you stick around long enough through the credits, you’ll get a little treat in terms of a teaser for where the “presumably last film” in the franchise will go.
all in all, go watch the film. it’s the perfect way to kick-off what looks like a big and exciting summer in terms of movies, and a great way to get you over the april showers and may blues.
final verdict (or TL;DR): worth watching in theatres, go now.
