Fast5-icon

There’s noth­ing wrong with mak­ing a goof­ball pop­corn movie.  Despite the many bad exam­ple of the form in mod­ern times — we’re look­ing at you, Michael Bay — there is always room for an ener­getic bit of fluff that daz­zles your eyes while your intel­lec­tual capa­bil­i­ties take a nice nap.  When such a movie is done well, it is the cin­e­matic equiv­a­lent of a sugar rush and the kind of thing that only Hollywood can pull off.

And that brings us to Fast Five, per­haps the gid­di­est expres­sion of popcorn-movie fun to hit the mul­ti­plexes this year.  As the title sug­gests, it’s the fifth film in the Fast & The Furious fran­chise.  It’s lev­els of qual­ity and con­sis­tency are a bit of sur­prise because this series has always been a bit of an under­achiever, even by pop­corn movie stan­dards: the F&F films have always had good pro­duc­tion val­ues and well-choreographed action but they’ve rarely had any­thing approach­ing an inspired story to sup­port the thrills. Part 3 is prob­a­bly the best of the bunch thanks to the novel Japanese set­ting, the pres­ence of a real actor in the lead via Lucas Black and a cameo from grind­house mar­tial arts god Sonny Chiba.

That said, Fast Five takes the fran­chise to a peak that was incon­ceiv­able in the ear­lier films.  It helps that the series has acquired enough char­ac­ters and styl­is­tic ele­ments over its past install­ments to actu­ally add up to a halfway decent plot — and they are all deployed in a basic but effec­tive way here.  For starters, you have rebel­lious good guy/federal offi­cer Brian (Paul Walker) reunited with his orig­i­nal target/mancrush Dominic (Vin Diesel) for the first time since part 1.  Brian and his lady love Mia (Jordana Brewster), Dom’s sis­ter, get things off to a rip-roaring start by bust­ing Dom out of prison in a dar­ing jail­break aboard a mov­ing prison bus.

The trio decamps to Brazil and that’s where things really heat up. As is usu­ally the case with these movies, the heroes needs to pull the arche­typal “one last job” to fund a com­fort­able exile.  Unfortunately, when they take the gig they dis­cover they are being used by crooked busi­ness­man (Joaquim De Almeida) and decide to plot an even big­ger heist — not just money but also the vault itself that holds the money.  To make things even more com­plex, they have to dodge a new law­man on their trail in the badass form of Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson!).

If any of that sounds over­loaded in terms of plot­ting, don’t worry — screen­writer Chris Morgan knows the name of the game here is spec­ta­cle and he doles out the plot/character stuff in eas­ily digested, bite-size chunks between the action beats.  He jug­gles the mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters — includ­ing an array of assis­tant thieves for the big heist — and plot threads in a con­fi­dent man­ner, giv­ing it just enough nar­ra­tive heft to keep the bom­bast afloat.  He also throws in a few fun char­ac­ter moments that add fla­vor, like an extended flir­ta­tion between cool-blooded Han Lue (Sung Kang) and sex­pot Gisele (Gal Gadot).  Most impor­tantly, he cre­ates an array of physics-defying but ener­getic setpieces.

And that’s where direc­tor Justin Lin’s skills come into play.  He’s been direct­ing the series since Tokyo Drift and has got­ten to a point where he’s per­fected a sleek, ener­getic for­mula that plays like gang­busters.  His approach is every bit as music-video styl­ized as a Michael Bay but his abil­ity to chore­o­graph action is much more sure­handed.  As flashy as the set­pieces are here — one involves heist­ing cars off a speed­ing train and the finale depicts a car chase that involves a bank vault dragged on high-tension cables — they are always easy to com­pre­hend.  Even bet­ter, the blend of prac­ti­cal stunts and CGI is seam­less (Your Humble Reviewer is still try­ing to fig­ure out which parts of the destruc­tion in the finale were dig­i­tally created).

Lin also makes smart use of the pop per­sonas that pop­u­late his cast.  Neither he nor Morgan ask too much of the play­ers, as that would be out of place in a light con­coc­tion like this.  Instead, the per­sonas of the actors do the work: Diesel brings the brawn as the mus­cu­lar lunkhead with a code of honor, Walker is appro­pri­ately jit­tery as his more hot­headed coun­ter­part and The Rock is all square-jawed right­eous­ness as the film’s numero-uno law­man.  Argue if you want about the act­ing skills of Diesel and Walker but they have a unique chem­istry — and the addi­tion of the unde­ni­ably tal­ented Johnson puts this over the top, in terms of both charisma and machismo (there’s a brawl between Johnson and Diesel that is worth the price of admis­sion alone — it’s the kind of fight where the brawlers knock each other through walls).

Lin and Morgan are also smart enough to not lean on the film’s cen­tral trio too heav­ily.  They give the audi­ence vari­ety via the ensem­ble cast: in addi­tion to the smol­der­ing chem­istry of Kang and Gadot, there is also light urban-style comic relief from Tyrese and Ludacris as co-conspirators with a streak of rivalry.  It’s also worth not­ing that De Almeida is typ­i­cally pro­fes­sional as the bad­die here, even notch­ing an impres­sive lit­tle solil­o­quy that adds a bit of adult-age grav­i­tas to the oth­er­wise delib­er­ately juve­nile pro­ceed­ings.  No one gets asked to do any heavy lift­ing performance-wise, but it’s a fun crew to watch and their diver­sity keeps the pro­ceed­ings fresh.

In short, Fast Five is exactly what you want from a pop­corn flick.  Ambition and depth are minor con­cerns when you’re deal­ing with tech­ni­cians who know to bal­ance and deploy the ele­ments of friv­o­lous fun with this much skill.  The end results are goof­ball Hollywood show­man­ship at its most beguil­ingly effer­ves­cent — and the mul­ti­plexes could always use a lit­tle more of that.