I generally reserve my DVD reviews for limited releases that no one got a chance to see in theaters. However, for a movie like Fast Five, I’ll make an exception. The reason: It was well-reviewed, made a ton of money, and was really bad.
Anyway, this movie is really bad. It doesn’t try to be anything amazing, it just wants to be a not-to-serious adventure. It is a really bad not-to-serious adventure.
While I admit I have not seen every entry in the Fast and Furious saga, from what I have watched I can say this is not particularly worse than the others. The center of the story has been moved away from street racing, probably because the number of explosions and sheer scale of location damage shown on screen has eradicated any credulity to an illegal sport of 200+mph racing in downtown LA (or Tokya, or Mexico City, or whatever exotic location the current film is shooting in). Not that we don’t see the occasional crowd—of easily 200 people—gathered for this mythical event in downtown Rio.
Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) escapes from his lengthy prison sentence in the opening scene when his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and her boyfriend Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker)swerves a car in front of the prison bus he is in. The ensuing collision flips the bus over, but leaves Walker’s car unharmed, because he is very skilled at this sort of thing. He learned it when he was working for the FBI to infiltrate street racing gangs.
Now the three of them become mercenaries, and decide to steel some cars taken from drug-dealers. However, when they try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement in the middle of the act, their “teammates” lose it and end up killing three government officials. Angry at the brutality of these gangsters, the Torettos and O’Connor decide they are going to use the intell they stole to rob the entire fortune from the gangs, which is well over $100 million.
Unfortunately, a US agent (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is intent on capturing them. The Rio official (Elsa Petaky) helping him begins to suspect that maybe they didn’t kill those federal agents after all, but is told that “our job is just to hunt down names we are given.” What isn’t noted is that if the Torettos hadn’t been working with the gangsters no one would have died, and in many countries they are just as guilty regardless of who pulled the trigger. Also, Toretto deserved to go to jail in the first place because organized crime and smuggling drugs is illegal.
$1.3 billion is the amount of our taxes that was used to help fund Mexico’s work in fighting organized crime that is distributing weapons and drugs and perpetrating violence in both nations. While the majority of viewers are totally safe from this, it is pathetic to glorify gangs and smuggling. There is no such thing as “good gangsters” and “bad gangsters.” There is a such thing as people who openly support and aid a corporation that is actively fighting the US and Mexican government, and then there is a such thing as honest people trying to catch them. Then there are rich Americans who try to act like the gangsters or pretend they are some kind of heroes and inadvertently hide the atrocities they are doing.
Fast Five has several other flaws. To begin with, the dumb plot holes. There is no effort in making a coherent story. Sure, the movie is better than most at writing interesting situations and interactions. But it is terrible at explaining how the police chief can make sure only the corrupt cops arrive at the massive explosion filled car chase that is leveling city blocks in downtown Rio.
When two of the good guys must gain a crimelord’s fingerprint, the female one (Gal Gadot) says “never send a man to do a woman’s job” and then strips to very skimpy underwear and seduces the criminal, gaining the fingerprinton her panties when he massages it. Seeing as this is her single contribution to the entire heist, I think some offense should be taken that that is what “a woman’s job” is.
Lyndon B. Johnson once said “Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society.” I hope when the next Fast and Furious film hits theaters, viewers keep that idea in mind.
Anyway, this movie is really bad. It doesn’t try to be anything amazing, it just wants to be a not-to-serious adventure. It is a really bad not-to-serious adventure.
While I admit I have not seen every entry in the Fast and Furious saga, from what I have watched I can say this is not particularly worse than the others. The center of the story has been moved away from street racing, probably because the number of explosions and sheer scale of location damage shown on screen has eradicated any credulity to an illegal sport of 200+mph racing in downtown LA (or Tokya, or Mexico City, or whatever exotic location the current film is shooting in). Not that we don’t see the occasional crowd—of easily 200 people—gathered for this mythical event in downtown Rio.
Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) escapes from his lengthy prison sentence in the opening scene when his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and her boyfriend Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker)swerves a car in front of the prison bus he is in. The ensuing collision flips the bus over, but leaves Walker’s car unharmed, because he is very skilled at this sort of thing. He learned it when he was working for the FBI to infiltrate street racing gangs.
Now the three of them become mercenaries, and decide to steel some cars taken from drug-dealers. However, when they try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement in the middle of the act, their “teammates” lose it and end up killing three government officials. Angry at the brutality of these gangsters, the Torettos and O’Connor decide they are going to use the intell they stole to rob the entire fortune from the gangs, which is well over $100 million.
Unfortunately, a US agent (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is intent on capturing them. The Rio official (Elsa Petaky) helping him begins to suspect that maybe they didn’t kill those federal agents after all, but is told that “our job is just to hunt down names we are given.” What isn’t noted is that if the Torettos hadn’t been working with the gangsters no one would have died, and in many countries they are just as guilty regardless of who pulled the trigger. Also, Toretto deserved to go to jail in the first place because organized crime and smuggling drugs is illegal.
$1.3 billion is the amount of our taxes that was used to help fund Mexico’s work in fighting organized crime that is distributing weapons and drugs and perpetrating violence in both nations. While the majority of viewers are totally safe from this, it is pathetic to glorify gangs and smuggling. There is no such thing as “good gangsters” and “bad gangsters.” There is a such thing as people who openly support and aid a corporation that is actively fighting the US and Mexican government, and then there is a such thing as honest people trying to catch them. Then there are rich Americans who try to act like the gangsters or pretend they are some kind of heroes and inadvertently hide the atrocities they are doing.
Fast Five has several other flaws. To begin with, the dumb plot holes. There is no effort in making a coherent story. Sure, the movie is better than most at writing interesting situations and interactions. But it is terrible at explaining how the police chief can make sure only the corrupt cops arrive at the massive explosion filled car chase that is leveling city blocks in downtown Rio.
When two of the good guys must gain a crimelord’s fingerprint, the female one (Gal Gadot) says “never send a man to do a woman’s job” and then strips to very skimpy underwear and seduces the criminal, gaining the fingerprinton her panties when he massages it. Seeing as this is her single contribution to the entire heist, I think some offense should be taken that that is what “a woman’s job” is.
Lyndon B. Johnson once said “Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society.” I hope when the next Fast and Furious film hits theaters, viewers keep that idea in mind.
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