'Fast Five' Review: Brilliantly Dumb Fun

I’ll never cease to be amazed at which films manage to spawn a sequel, much less an entire series of followups. There have been a dozen versions of “Friday the 13th,” 10 versions of “Halloween,” three versions of “Porky’s” and at least six variations of “American Pie” (counting the direct-to-video releases) balancing off more entertaining efforts like the five “Lethal Weapon” films and six “Star Wars” movies.

But I never thought I would possibly enjoy a “Fast and the Furious” film, with the seemingly mindless concept not even enticing me to see the first three movies in the series on television. But two years ago while visiting a friend in Boston, I was dragged into the fourth “Furious” film, “Fast and Furious” (inventive!) despite my complaints that I wouldn’t understand the plot without having seen the first three movies.

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“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be like you haven’t missed a thing,” said my friend. And boy, was he right. The movie was indeed as stupid as I expected, but it also lived up to its name as fast and furious fun. And my friend was right: despite having missed three entire films – six full hours – of the characters’ prior lives and adventures, I understood it completely and without taxing my brain at all.

So imagine my surprise with “Fast Five,” the fifth film in the series, which opens today. Even after having liked the fourth film on a visceral level, I thought this would be just milking the cash cow dry. But instead, the filmmakers – including director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan, who have now presided over the last three films of the series – have somehow decided to step up their game and establish the film as a classic of the action genre that will surely stand as one of the biggest and best entertainments of the year and hell, maybe even the decade.

It really is that good.

Now, don’t get me wrong: this ain’t Shakespeare. It’s not going to win Oscars, although in a perfect world there would be much-deserved Oscars given to the best stunt work in films each year. But it is pure adrenalin-fueled, edge-of-your-seat insanity with enough twists, soul and charisma to make the audience of critics I saw it with burst into wild applause three times.

So what’s the story? Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is, as always, the head of a gang of elite car thieves and racers. In the 4th film, he was sent away to prison before being rescued in the end by his friend Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) who’s also Brian’s girlfriend and the rest of his gang. O’Conner had been a deep-undercover federal agent sent to bring Toretto’s gang down earlier in the series, but as he fell for Mia, he eventually befriended Dominic and now has crossed the line into the gang.

As “Fast Five” starts Dominic, Brian and Mia are on a train hurtling through the Brazilian desert and planning to help other criminals rip off some high-powered cars that are stored aboard it. They find that the cars were actually seized by US DEA agents, and Dominic quickly realizes there musts be something more at play than just another hot rod to resell. Our trio of antiheroes foil the robbery plan by deciding to drive the cars they steal to a different destination than planned, but they soon crash into a river.

Captured by the army of crime kingpin Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), who controls Rio with an iron fist and by giving the city’s impoverished residents well-paying jobs in his criminal enterprises, Dominic and Brian manage to escape and figure out that one of the cars they stole has a computer chip with Reyes’ entire business plans and network’s files on it. They decide to rob him blind and wipe him out of the city for good – a plan that will enrich themselves but still serve the noble purpose of setting the terrified citizens of the city free from Reyes’ tyranny.

However, things get complicated when a fiercely unstoppable US federal agent named Hobbs (played by Dwayne Johnson, aka “The Rock”) is dispatched with a small army of agents to capture the trio and bring them back to the US at all costs. The reason is that they were framed for the murder of the DEA agents who had been on the train.

At the same time, the trio comes to realize that the potential haul from their planned looting of Reyes’ empire is way bigger than they ever imagined: a cool $100 million. They also realize that they need to gather a team of experts to help them, so they call in a full coterie of sidekicks from the series’ previous films to form a de facto “Oceans 11” team. But even with the team in place, another problem presents itself: Reyes controls the Rio police force and has caught on to the gang’s plan to rob him – so he stashes all his loot in the massive vault located in the center of police HQ.

So now our team of wisecracking, fast-driving experts has to take on a veritable army of police and crash the most secure building in the city if they are to pull off their plan. And they have to do it with Hobbs and his agents on their trail.

It may sound like I’ve given away the whole plot, but that’s just the first half, and it doesn’t reveal any of the absolutely awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping stunts that happen along the way. And if you think the first half has a surprising amount of twists for a film of this style, hang on for the ride through the second half, as the film improbably gets better and more wildly entertaining with nearly every scene, climaxing in one of the greatest car-chase sequences ever created.

Yes, stuff blows up real good. Fistfights, foot chases, shootouts and insane car chases occur.

There’s barely a line of dialogue that isn’t so cliché that you can’t finish the sentence before the character does. The guy who plays Reyes seems to be the same guy who’s played Mexican baddies in a zillion other flicks, and is almost as big a cliché as Juan Valdes selling coffee. And liberal-minded film-goers will likely have a laugh reading homoerotic undertones into every glowering face-off between Diesel and Johnson.

But damn, this film is fun. And faith-minded viewers will also be startled by the amount of pro-Christian content in the film.

Yes, you read right. The film’s first image of Rio is a sweeping shot of the giant Christ statue that overlooks the city, and that statue is featured imposingly in a couple of other dramatic moments in the film. Once, it’s easy to write off as “that’s just a tourist shot.” Three times, it seems to mean something, especially in a film where Dominic quietly prays over and makes a somber Sign of the Cross over the body of a dead friend, joyfully asks another gang member to “say grace” over a meal, and thoughtfully discusses his own father’s faith and his family’s weekly churchgoing as his favorite childhood memory. These kinds of moments are all too rare in mainstream movies these days, so a hopeful side effect of the movie’s inevitable smash-hit status will be more filmmakers with the guts to make their heroes people of Christian faith.

While some of the loot that the gang steals is kept by them for their own personal use, a couple big chunks of it are given for nobler purposes and the gang sees the robbery as a true mission of mercy to free the city. And while I can’t give away specifics without major spoilers, forgiveness and family play key elements of the plot and dialogue throughout the film and are given clear precedence over the desire for money and cars.

Add in the fact that the film has a refreshingly low amount of profanity and cuts back greatly on pointless montages of scantily-clad women that flowed through the earlier films, and you’ve got a movie that will thrill people of all ages and provide a fun afternoon out for families with kids age 12 or 13 and older. Order your tickets early, because this will be one huge hit.