Fresh off breaking Dom (Vin Diesel) out of prison, Toretto, Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) are looking for a big score so they can retire. After a drug kingpin (Joaquim de Almeida) tries to kill them, our heroes decide he is that big score.
Such a big score will take a little more manpower than Dom, Brian and Mia call on a few friends to help them commit the heist of the century.
The only thing standing in their way is not the drug lord - it is a man mountain named Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).
Will the Family succeed?
Ironically, considering how important it is in the franchise, I missed this one in theatres. I caught it later on TV.
I missed this week’s screening - the theatre pushed the time back too late and with an epic 130 runtime I did not want to be home at midnight.
So I opted for streaming.
While it is not always the case, I do find the big screen can give a movie a little more magic - it did not help 2 Fast, 2 Furious - but for the majority of these reviews, I have enjoyed the movies more. For movies like this, I think it helps because it means I am not surfing the web/social media during dull patches.
Re-watching it this time, I really wish I could have seen it on the big screen. I watched the movie but having the option of checking out really affected my experience.
Man, I remember the excitement/surprise when this movie came out, and it actually made me excited to see it. Sadly, when I watched it, I remember not liking it.
Despite its rep as the best entry, there are elements of Fast Five which always held it down (when I watched it).
Before I get into that, I will get into what this movie gets right - first off the bat, this movie knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be.
From the opening bus flip, into the main title, Fast Five wants to be an OTT action movie. It is interesting tonally, because I felt like it still carried the earnestness of the first four entries.
It is fascinating watching now-familiar characters coming together. It is more interesting to watch established characters remade into new roles - Tej has evolved into a tech wizard, while Roman Pierce has evolved from the loose cannon of 2F2F to the wisecracking everyman who cannot believe how ridiculous their situations are. Some of these evolutions are still being worked out - Roman has not moved into full-on parody yet, for one - but for all intents and purposes Fast Five is the beginning of the franchise as a dominant player.
While he is only onscreen for minutes, this movie re-affirmed Sung Kang as the most magnetic member of the Fast Family. He is so cool and understated in this overblown movie that he stands out even more. I do not get the chemistry in his romance with Gizelle - we do not really see them get together - but Kang plays it so well (his murmured ‘I think I’m in love’ after watching her drift around corners is great) that it almost comes off. I cannot wait to see him come back in Fast 9.
The re-appearance which carried the most weight, weirdly, was Matt Schulze as Vince. In the first movie, Vince was Dom’s best friend and confidant - he does not trust Brian and cottons on early that he is a cop. In Fast Five, their roles are reversed. The filmmakers are smart enough to use that backstory, giving the scenes between Vince and Brian a tension that makes some otherwise boring ‘family’ scenes watchable.
There is a real frustration to Schulze’s performance that works - he is watching the man who destroyed his life frolicking around with his best friend. He is in the position Brian was in the first movie.
Watching Schulze present as the crew assembles, I felt a tinge of pathos. Here is the franchise shedding the last pieces of the original movie to grow into something new.
Bringing in Dwayne Johnson was a great move. I remember when I was younger wondering why Diesel and Johnson never made a movie together - like the other parts of this movie, their showdown in Fast Five felt like the universe coming into alignment.
Johnson’s humourless one-note performance is great. He is also not in the movie as much as I thought he would be, which made him pop even more.
Every time he stomps on screen, the movie feels funnier and more self-aware than every other scene. Johnson’s lines and actions feel like action movie cliches, but they never feel stale - maybe because there is no hint of irony to any of it.
Having Johnson in the movie also threw into relief how stale Diesel feels in this movie - he rumbles his lines with the same deliberate cadence, but he feels lethargic compared with Johnson’s energized performance. It is ironic how the worm turns - Hobbs and Shaw burned me out on the Rock - it will be interesting to see how my feelings evolve over the course of these re-viewings.
Because of all these qualities I wish I liked the movie more. The action sequences are shot clean and clear - there is none of the shaky-cam from the previous movie - and there are some effectively cinematic emotional moments (the beat where Hobbs thinks he is about to die is genuinely affecting).
My problem with Fast Five is that I do not connect with anything. The central characters are an important part of the ensemble, but like Fast & Furious, when the movie is focused on our core trio I just lose interest in the movie.
I cannot get it out of my head that - at this point in the franchise - Diesel is making these movies to keep his box office up enough to make another Riddick movie. He is trying to play a hardened badass, cool and silent, but I prefer Diesel when he is more dynamic and exposed. He is so magnetic in the first movie, but here he feels a little checked out.
Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster are fine together but they fade into the furniture when they are juxtaposed with everyone else. The movie wants the movie to be about their relationship maturing but I did not care at all.
All the characters are essentially action figures but I feel like the later movies figured out how to juggle them a bit better, and with more of a sense of irony. I like my action earnest but this movie needs more of a sense of humour.
I also wish the gang were going after a scheme with a little more stakes - there is a whole midsection where they are trying to work out how to break into the police station - they spend a long time on a gambit that keeps failing, and then switch to another scenario. I feel like it would have been more dramatic to bring forward Hobbs earlier as a fly in the ointment.
Hobbs also cancels out the villain of the piece - Joaquim de Almeida is terrific casting as an action movie bad ‘un but he is just a rich guy in a suit. He does not even have cool henchmen or anything.
I feel if I cared more about the characters and it had a tighter story with a stronger antagonist, I might like Fast Five as much as everyone else does. The movie is also way too long - this became another trend with the franchise as the movies expanded the cast and the gave them their own subplots. I am a fan of this ensemble format, but it will make it tough for watching these movies every Saturday night.
My feelings aside, this is a really important movie - it established the franchise for the 2010s, and probably helped Hollywood in its conversion to extended universes. Take that, Marvel - Vin Diesel won that race too.
Now that the franchise is up and running, it will be interesting to see if the momentum can be maintained for Fast & Furious 6.
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