Fast Five

I was kicking myself because I have to say I had a rather rollicking good time with Fast Five. I just could resist the vehicular carnage. The ending where the vault is used as a weapon to decimate buildings and policia cars (among other structures) by Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, culminating on the bridge is off-the-charts insane! I just faced the fact that movies with cars that tear it up, flip repeatedly, and smash into crashing heaps make me their bitch.

The plot is some nonsense about Vin Diesel and Paul Walker “getting the band together” (or just an excuse to collect supporting characters from previous F & F films into an Ocean’s Eleven type group) to go after a drug lord’s millions of dollars, gathered up from various “cash houses” in Rio, transported to a vault in the policia’s own station. Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Matt Schulz, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot (smokin’ hot), Tego Calderon, and Don Omar form this superteam that are united in taking every last cent of drug lord Joaquim de Almeida’s money. Getting to it, removing the vault, and escaping with it won’t be an easy task. All of this goes on as The Rock (looking buff and bad ass) and his feds are out to find them for the mistaken murder of DEA agents during the removal of “hot cars” from a train. One of the cars has all the locations of the cash houses for Almeida located on a chip found hidden in a CD player. So our heroes have two events on a collision course with them, with Vin Diesel and The Rock engaged in a fight that results in a lot of broken windows and walls, punches packed with only the kind of velocity Hollywood could provide. You get a nifty foot race/chase with Vin Diesel and Walker hopping across roofs and through alleys (the location of Rio and how these buildings are so bunched together makes the chase even more exciting) trying to avoid Almeida’s gunmen and The Rock with his agents.

Fast Five puts a lot into how the gang orchestrates their heist, with details such as surveillance (the locations of the cash houses and Almeida’s boys/operation), a remote control vehicle with a camera lens (used to survey the vault), Gadot using a pat on the ass by Almeida (to get his hand print to unlock the vault) and the use of their own policia cars identical to Rio’s law enforcement.

There are extra subplots such as Brewster’s pregnancy, questioning of Schulz’ loyalty, The Rock’s dedication to catching Vin Diesel and Walker, and a momentary alliance between The Rock and Vin Diesel after Almeida’s men kill several of his agents. Of course, Almeida lays on the slime as the drug lord who emphasizes how he provides certain “luxuries” to the poor of Rio in order to control them.

Vehicular mayhem, lots of showboating by the stars with their cars, Walker needing to defeat Vin Diesel in a race, and The Rock flexing his muscles and looking all dead serious are included in Fast Five.