Rated PG-13 for sexual content, intense sequences of violence, language and intense sequences of action
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Matt Schulze, Kang Sung
Director: Justin Lin
So, how does this new addition compare to the earlier films in the series? Are you kidding me? I can't even recall the names of all of them, let alone their semblance of plots. And it really doesn't matter. The movie is an excuse to bring together characters from the earlier movies into another centrifuge of cinematic virility. It is what it is.
After busting their leader, the brooding Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) from police custody during a prison transfer, the gang finds themselves in Rio de Janeiro. Here, Toretto and his partner-in-crime, former federal agent Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), along with Toretto's-sister-and-O'Conner's-newly-pregnant-girlfriend Mia (Jordana Brewster), participate in the heist of several high-end automobiles being transferred via train. They more or less pull it off, but are now pursued by a crime boss named Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) with ubiquitous influence over the entire city of Rio, including the police force. One of the stolen cars came embedded with a microchip of valuable importance.
It's a little disconcerting, I suppose, to have car thieves as your heroes, but the movie cunningly sidesteps this by having the Brazilian authorities under the corrupt thumb of an uber-wealthy yet paranoid villain. (How paranoid? This guy actually makes his henchmen shield their eyes before opening his vault using a hand-print scan locking mechanism. Yeah, you read that right.) Both groups are being hunted by a muscle-clad federal agent named Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). Toretto and O'Conner decide to pull off one last job. One that would wipe out Reyes' entire fortune and set them all up for life.
Reyes' money sits in a vault at police headquarters, and the team conjures up a plan to infiltrate. Part of said plan involves, if I understood this correctly, an escape route where a car would have to travel so ridiculously fast that it would be undetectable by a high definition digital video camera. Say what? Harry Potter's invisibility cloak is more credible.
The plan leads to a thunderous, blistering pell-mell of a climactic chase that laughs in the face of physics... where every force is unstoppable and no object is immovable. To steal the money, Toretto and O'Conner bust through a police barricade in two Chrylser SRTs, attach cables to the vault itself, literally dislodge it from the building, and steer it through the streets of Rio. (In the world of "Fast Five," gravity is no match for a good set of whitewalls.) They never lose control of their automobiles during the chase, even as the vault zigzags behind them. Apparently, the vault came embedded with its own anti-lock braking system.
Toretto and O'Conner are pursued by the entire Rio police force but are guided through the streets with the help of Mia, who sits before a laptop in a remote building. She relays instructions, and seems to know exactly where they should turn to avoid any obstacle imaginable, the closing distance of the pursuers down to the millisecond, and the precise cutoff routes of the police even before the police know. Unless she's instant messaging God, I'm curious as to what that laptop is logged onto to provide her with such accurate reconnaissance.
I didn't find the absurdities objectionable, just funny. The director is Justin Lin, who burst onto the indie film scene with the remarkably powerful drama "Better Luck Tomorrow" but has since scaled back his ambition to helm big-budget action fare. He keeps the pace up and packages together some nifty but goofy chase scenes.
As a lead-in to the summer action movie season, the film more or less works. It delivers what it promises, even if it doesn't promise much more than rapid-fire action. As for myself, I can't quite recommend it, as its base level action competency is at the service of nothing more than to justify the totally radically awesome trailer, dude. My lack of a recommendation is actually a compliment in disguise. The filmmakers know their target audience, and I am not it. The bottom line is this... if you're hungry for some nonstop action, this one will give it to you in droves.
* * 1/2 out of * * * * stars
