Those who have kept up with the series will recognize that Fast Five is a reunion movie of sorts, bringing together different characters from different sequels and assembling them into the cinematic version of a greatest hits package. From Rob Cohen’s original we have the central trio: Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), a guru racer who has spent most of his life on the run from the law; Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), a former undercover cop who was originally assigned to bring down Toretto but instead got sucked into his world and is now his righthand man; and Mia (Jordana Brewster), Toretto’s sister and Brian’s girlfriend. The majority of the story takes place in Rio de Janeiro, where Toretto decides that the only way for his gang to be truly “free” (that is, not being constantly hunted by international police) is for them to steal $100 million from Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), Rio’s most powerful crime lord who wields not only a personal army of gun-toting thugs from the flavellas, but also most of Rio’s police force, in whose vault he has stashed his money.

As the original movie borrowed heavily from Point Break (1991), so Fast Five borrows from the various Ocean’s movies (take your pick) and all the other variations on the “one last heist” scenario that requires assembling a crack crew of experts that will work together as a perfectly tuned symbiotic whole, which is essentially what returning screenwriter Chris Morgan (who penned the last two sequels) does by raiding the previous films for their surviving characters. From the first sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), we get tech expert Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and the smooth-talking Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson); from the second sequel, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), we get racer Han Le (Sung Kang); Le also appeared in the most recent entry, Fast & Furious (2009), which introduced former Mosssad operative and weapons expert Gisele Harabo (Gal Gadot) and the comically squabbling “muscle” guys Tego Leo and Rico Santos (Tego Calderon and Don Omar).

The significant new addition is Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs, who is presented as a kind of ying to Toretto’s yang. Both of them are hardened, bulked-up professionals who are equally committed to their causes, which puts them on an obvious crash course (unfortunately, their eventual mano-a-mano smackdown is one of the film’s most rote scenes). Johnson, who has proved over the past decade to be a surprisingly flexible actor who is at home in both loud action movies and comedies, plays Hobbs as a completely humorless bloodhound whose unwavering intensity works as a underlying strain of comic relief. Constantly sweating and so muscular that he looks like he will burst through his shirt at any moment, Johnson barks his lines with singular authority, even when said lines are deliriously ridiculous (when told by an underling that he has good news and bad news, Hobbs snaps, “You know I like my dessert first!”). When Johnson is absent from the screen, the intensity is more than managed by Diesel and Walker, who have developed a relatable chemistry after three outings together. Diesel, who has always been an underrated screen presence, makes Toretto consistently intriguing (he conveys the man’s singular intelligence beneath all that brawn and macho posturing), while age has done wonders for Walker, giving an edge to his boyish good looks that conveys a necessary sense of weariness.

At the core of Fast Five, of course, are the action sequences, which are just as grandiose and explosive as you would expect, starting with a pre-credit bus flip on the open highway and culminating with a positively ludicrous (but undeniably enthralling) chase in which the gang uses two tricked out Dodge Chargers to drag a five-ton safe through the streets of Rio (and through several buildings, dozens of cars, numerous telephone poles, bus kiosks, etc.) with half of the city’s police force in pursuit. The film’s visceral highpoint, however, is a daring heist in which Toretto and company steal expensive cars from a high-speed train by driving a rig up next to the train and unloading them one by one. The heist goes wrong and Toretto ends up saving O’Conner by having him leap from the now flaming rig onto a speeding racecar just before it smashes into a bridge support. The scene culminates with them driving full-speed off a cliff and falling hundreds of feet to the river below, and the manner in which the film conveys the physical presence of the stunt--not manipulated pixels in a computer, but footage of actual objects moving through space at ridiculous speeds--is what makes movies like Fast Five work. They make you feel like you’re in the midst of the chrome and dust and blood, speedfreaking right over the edge.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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