Review: Fast Five

Apparently Vin Diesel doesn't watch much WWE

Fast Five amazed me before I even had a chance to see it. It's opening weekend cashed in an amazing 83.6 million dollars, making it the largest opening weekend for a movie in April, ever. Also, making it the largest opening for the year so far. A benchmark held by Rio, which cashed in about 40 million it's opening weekend and, ironically enough, is set in the same setting. So maybe it wasn't necessarily Fast Five that impressed me so much, but the movie-goers. American movie-goers must like their action, cars, and scantily clad women. Even with the surprisingly good reviews it had been receiving, I went into Fast Five pretty skeptical. It turns out that, while it's far from being a great movie, it's really not that bad.

Fast Five brings back all your favorite characters from the previous films. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker head the crew which also includes Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson,  Jordana Brewster and others. They've all come back together to do one last job against a dirty Brazilian drug lord. They are gonna take his money, all of it. The ensemble class makes it feel like a less glamorous Ocean's 11. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (who is ridiculously huge in this movie) plays the U.S. Special Agent assigned to bring Vin and crew down because they have been wrongfully accused of murder, adding a Fugitive element to the movie. So now we have Ocean's 11  mixed with Fugitive mixed with some crazy car action scenes. Though the ideas are far from being original, they work pretty well. Fast Five shines the most with it's action scenes. They're all very well choreographed and stunning to watch, it's fun, and from the opening scene, you're constantly wanting more crazy stuff to happen. On a smaller note, there is a lot of Portugese spoken in this film and the creative way in which the subtitles are done give Five an almost undeserved creative flare.

The movie is bogged down by a lot of unnecessary dialogue that boils down to each character saying a ridiculous one liner, over and over. Seriously, try and count the one liners in this movie; you'll lose count. Much of the dialogue could have been cut. The movie clocks in at over 2 hours when it could have easily been 90 minutes. The acting isn't great - The Rock is probably the best actor in this movie, which isn't saying much. Vin Diesel is sometimes incoherent. I don't understand it, but sometimes he sounded like he was trying to do an Adam Sandler impression - not that you even need to hear what he says to understand the movie, but why couldn't we have had some of those creative subtitles for his dialogue?

While it has many flaws, the action in Fast Five will keep you entertained, the one liners will occasionally make you giggle, and you'll have some fun. It's a good movie to start the Summer Movie Season. Undoubtedly, it will not hold it's spot at the top this weekend with the release of Thor, but I guess it's okay for America to enjoy this parade of cars, action, and women for the time being.

This just went from "Mission: Impossible" to "Mission: In-Freakin'-Sanity" (Chalk up a one liner)

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