April 30, 2011 -- Most sequels are not nearly as good as the original film, but there are exceptions to every rule and “Fast Five,” is one those exceptional sequels, even better than the original film, “The Fast and the Furious.” Like the original, this is a pure action film. The action is so over the top it borders on silliness, but it is fun to watch.

The main actors are back again from the previous four “Fast and Furious” films, and an additional action star, Dwayne Johnson, has been added to this one. Johnson plays Hobbs, a formidable federal law enforcement operative who is dispatched with his elite team to capture federal fugitives Dom Toretto (played by Vin Diesel, who reprises his role) and Brian O'Conner (played by Paul Walker, also reprising this role). Toretto's brother and sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster) are also along for the ride. The film starts out with a jailbreak scene which is simply ridiculous. The team smashes a prison bus to smithereens, with Dom inside. Not only is Dom not killed in this dumb stunt, but an announcer tells the audience, as I laughed, that nobody at all was killed in the breakout, in which the bus rolled about a dozen times.

The scene then swiftly shifts to Rio, where the local crime lord, Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida of “Clear and Present Danger”) explains, in a speech straight out of a Tarantino script, why Brazilians speak Portugese, and not Spanish. A war quickly breaks out between Reyes and Toretto after the team steals some very fancy, hot cars from the DEA, which gets the attention of Hobbs and his team, who travel to Brazil to capture Toretto and his gang. Toretto decides the best way to get out of this situation is to steal all of the money that Reyes has stashed away. The rest of the plot devolves into a heist. Toretto calls in some expert help to pull off the $100 million cash heist. The movie turns into something like “Ocean's 11” with fast cars, only not that clever. The lack of cleverness, however, is offset by a lot of action.

There is a fair amount of dramatic histrionics in the film as there are numerous heated arguments and angry accusations. This is all pretty much a waste of time. This content isn't very effective, or believable. There is a bit of a romance that develops between two of the people on the heist team. This is an unexpected bonus in an action film. The action scenes are where the film really shines, with lots of exciting chases, including a foot chase through a Rio slum (favela), car chases, a car heist from a moving train, a daring jump from a car plunging into a canyon. A final car chase is like a demolition derby with incredible destruction. Cops were probably killed in this final chase, bit it was O.K., because they weren't honest cops. They were corrupt cops. This reminds me of the famous line in “True Lies” where Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) admits to his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) that he has been a spy for years and that he has killed people on the job, “But they were all bad,” he adds. O.K., so it is silly, but it is an entertaining movie for us action movie fans anyway. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2011 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
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