***WARNING***
THE FOLLOWING POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS. IT ALSO DOESN’T CONSIDER A SPEECH IMPEDIMENT AS QUALIFICATION FOR A PERSON TO BE REGISTERED ‘DISABLED’. REASON BEING THAT A SPEECH IMPEDIMENT IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ANNOYING CHARACTER TRAIT THAT COULD BE FIXED BY SHUTTING THE FUCK UP.
***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***
The 'Fast and Furious' franchise is a grim insight into the sate of our cinema going culture. From the very start of this depressing, abortion needing film series the scrips have been terrible, the acting quality near non-existent and the intelligence level of any given second of screen would warrant an IQ level insulting to that of a puddle. Yet despite the many, many flaws of the franchise, the films continue to take in money and have developed a strong following. The original 'Fast and Furious' was an original if over the top insight into illegal car street racing culture. It's protagonist was a cocky young cop played by Paul Walker and the antagonist was a hard nosed, violent street racer played by the worlds most over compensating gay man Vin Diesel. However once the film got released, the youths akin to that kid in The Offsprings 'Pretty Fly For A White Guy' music video saw Diesels, Toretto character as the perfect personification of the king of the street cars, something which they themselves with their souped up Fait Pandas dreamed of becoming. From that point on the 'Fast and the Furious' franchise took off like a Nos propelled lawn dart, glamorizing and encouraging our societies lowest forms of secondary school dropouts to get out there and break the law because thats whats cool.
The saddest aspect to this story is that while I hold the franchise in almost complete contempt, I secretly lock myself away from time to time and enjoy taking it in, salivating at the pretty cars and completely brain dead action that puts Michael Bays films in a positively golden, glowing light. So, you could say I'm a fan. I've seen each film in order as they came out, I enjoyed all of them bar one up to this point and when the time came for me to go and see 'Fast Five' in my local Vue, I was actually quite excited to be doing so. What I didn't bank on however was 'Fast Five' actually being quite good, no, seriously!
'Fast Five' opens with two back to back action sequences that are both tense and exciting. Their fast paced, well shot, crystal clear and really set you up for exactly what this franchise is all about. Fast cars, big explosions and lack of physics. The story then flips its tone slightly and before you know it your watching a heist movie very reminiscent of 'Oceans Eleven'. There is a large team of specialists, each with their roles to play in order to rob a safe, filled with enough money to please Charlie Sheen for a week. Surprisingly, there is very little street racing this time around, in fact there is only one very brief scene in the middle of the film which could quite easily have been left out. 'Fast Five' doesn't suffer for this though, actually I believe it improves the film in the long run.
As before the script and acting leave a lot to be desired. Its the same actors as featured in the series' pervious installments with the addition of Dwayne Johnson who now sports a mighty beard in order to distinguish him from Vin Diesel. Despite the lack of true talent going on contextually, 'Fast Five' has been rather well shot and well directed. This is Justin Lin's third 'Fast and Furious' film and his style and exuberance as a director really drives the story well, especially in the films extraordinary action sequences. 'Fast Five' is a master class in dumb action, there are real stunts, spectacular set pieces and a final car chase that rivals many of recent memories climatic action climaxes.
On the serious down side 'Fast Five' has a few flaws, the most major being its run time. BIg summer action movies like this should be capped just under the two hour mark because an audience can't focus on a film of this kind for much longer than that without losing interest. 'Fast Five' is 130 minutes long, and it could have easily dropped thirty minutes from the middle section. It gets a little bogged down in family politics at one point and because the writing and acting aren't up to snuff, I couldn't have cared less. The films lesser negative points include a couple of characters who appear to be completely pointless, simply talking in foreign tongues and generally being quite annoying. There is also one fault with the film that seems so petty to complain about that I almost don't want to mention it, but does that big Jesus "its this big" statue have to be shown every few minutes in order for me to be reminded that 'Fast Five' is set in Rio? No it doesn't, just the one shot of it would do, instead of the six or seven I believe the film included. Finally there is product placement absolutely everywhere, the cars obviously come with their trademark components all very impressive I'm sure to any car enthusiast, but on top of that is the cop team that appear to have been sponsored by Under Armor. Its ignorable to a point, but 'Fast Five' will thrust its product placement cock in your face constantly and await for you to start sucking. Its got annoying is all I'm saying.
These points aside however I really enjoyed 'Fast Five'. It delivered what I have come to expect from the franchise and added some genuine quality to the proceedings. Its not going to please everyone, but if your a fan of big budget action films and occasionally like to leave your brains at the door then I think 'Fast Five' will go down pretty well. Its by far the best film in the series thus far and its well worth a look in.
Fast Five gets...
3.5 out of 5
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