Fast Five - Movie Review

Fast Five is the latest of The Fast and the Furious franchise, bringing back the original cast, as well as a majority of the cast from the other three movies. Fast Five starts off right where Fast and Furious left off. Brian (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) are about to bust out Dom (Vin Diesel) from the bus that is taking him to jail for life. In a highly unrealistic scene the bus flips over a car, smashing the bus to bits and amazingly no one gets hurt. Dom gets away and the trio run off to Brazil.

Brian and Mia arrive in Rio de Janeiro where they find Vince (Matt Schulze) who convinces them to join him in a job to steal cars from a train. Dom arrives to help and realizes the crew is only interested in one of the cars, which he instructs Mia to drive away with and meet up with him later. There are DEA agents on the train, who sees that the train is being robbed, and after a shoot-out, Brian and Dom escape, only to be caught by Hernan Reyes, the owner of the cars and a business man who is the crime lord that runs Rio. Dom discovers there is a chip in the car that lists all of Reyes' money laundering activities. He decides to pull a heist to steal all of Reyes' money and with Brian, puts together a crew that consists of all the characters from the last four movies. Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is called in to Rio to arrest Dom and Brian. With Hobbs on their tail, the crew has to outwit them as well as the police and Reyes' men.

Fast Five disappointed in that it did not involve much street racing (almost non-existent!) but instead, was very Ocean's Eleven-esque. The movie was more about a robbery more than anything. No import cars? :( Also it seemed out of character for most of the cast - most of the characters weren't involved in crime, but all of a sudden they are joining together to rob a bank? And let's not even start with Paul Walker's character being a cop/FBI then throwing that away to rescue Dom and live life on the run.

The movie was action packed, so it's still worth watching. I enjoyed it enough, and the car chase scene with the bank vault was exciting. A lot of the action sequences were very hard to believe, I mean, come on, how does a car not get smashed up or even scratched when you're driving like a maniac crashing into everything? But who cares about all of that, right? The question you're probably dying to ask is - who would win in a fight, Vin Diesel or The Rock??? I guess you'll just have to watch to find out (I'm rooting for Vin Diesel).

There is a scene at the end of the credits that sets up the 6th (and the last, so they say) movie where Eva Mendes gets to reprise her character as Monica Fuentes and they bring Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) back! *gasp*

Fast Five comes out in theatres this Friday, April 29th. You can also watch it in IMAX.