Fast Five (2011) review

In the ten years since The Fast & The Furious hit cinema screens it has spawned another four films, including the no-so-successful Tokyo Drift. For this new tale, Director Justin Lin takes the action to Rio. Mia and Brian (Paul Walker) have broken Dom (Vin Diesel) out of a prison truck and the gang head to Rio where they soon take a job organised by old pal Vince.

The job, naturally, isn’t all it seems and they soon find themselves in trouble with Rio’s most dangerous businessman and drug lord, Reyes. Dom decides to get a crew together from the franchise’s past to do one last job to get enough money so they can all disappear. However, their recent actions have attracted the attention of Federal Agent, Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), a man that’s called in when things get really rough and they need trouble sorted with no questions asked.

What then occurs is a fast action ride through the streets of Rio with plenty of gun fire, wheels and brooding one-liners from Dom. The storyline has moved on from the first film and so have the characters. It is hard to keep up with whether Brian O’Connell is on the right or wrong side of the law again and to confuse audiences more the film is once again a prequel to Tokyo Drift.

Despite having two fantastic car sequences, Fast Five lacks on the racing that made the films so popular in the first place, with audiences robbed of seeing Brian and Dom win car street races. Such missing essences detract from the big spectacal that Fast & Furious is known.

The fight scene between Diesel and The Rock is one of the film’s highlights, pitting two of cinema’s biggest built stars against one another for the first time. The Rock has definitely doubled in size and his old school brawl with Diesel won’t disappoint viewers.

Lin ties up the loose ends nicely, but no one can say whether we will hear the screech of car tyres and the sound of nitrous injection once more.