You’ve probably seen the recent scene that depicts Vin Diesel calling together his bunch of mates from around the world: Paul Walker, the Asian dude who eats crisps, Ludacris, the black guy from Transformers and…the rest of them who have no personalities to speak of.
Turns out they got another job to do, and since none of them are actually doing anything these days, they get right on it. Their aim is to rob the richest and most powerful man in Brazil. Prompting several members to walk away, including the black guy from Transformers, but wait Vin’s not said the amount of money in that annoying slow voice of his “100 million dollars.” Everyone is 'down' and the black guy from Transformers is back on-side, Michael Bay mustn’t be paying like he used to.
Yes, this is the Fast Five, or the Fast and the Furious 5, I still don’t know what its official name is as I think they ran with Fast Five until realising their core audience didn’t understand it meant it was the fifth Fast and the Furious film so they converted to The Fast and the Furious 5. Nothing quite like spelling it out for them. Surely Paul Walker’s mere presence in a movie shows it’s a Fast and the Furious movie, seriously he’s done absolutely nothing else!
I think it’s fair to say the Fast and the Furious franchise is getting a little tired now. At the fourth instalment its fuel light was well and truly on and it was a mad dash to the finish line before the gas simply ran out. Once it did cross the line I remember thinking that was it, the end of the Fast and the Furious forever.
But I was wrong, perhaps there was more that could be done, maybe it just needed to be supped up before one final race. And what do you do when the engine in your movie franchise is tired? You throw The Rock in that’s what!
Yes, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is in this instalment, and my God, without him this movie would be terrible! He is by far the best part of this movie and he overshadows all the other characters, even Vin Diesel. He plays the man responsible for bringing Don and Paul Walker in, I’d be scared if I were them.
You’ll have to forgive my forgetfulness, but I cannot remember what happens in the previous movies. I never watched the Tokyo one because it had Little BowWow in it and I’m really struggling to remember what happens in the other ones. I think, going off this movie, that Don (Vin Diesel) lost his girlfriend at some point, either to death or in a petting zoo, I think she was Rodriguez, but I’m not 100% sure on that. Paul Walker and Don’s sister must have got it together at some point too as he’s having a baby with her in this new one.
Anyway I don’t think it matters, it’s the Fast and the Furious, a movie where stupid things happen and they race around a lot while women in skimpy outfits just stand around waiting for their paycheck. This is true in two of those departments for Fast Five (I’m going with that name), a lot of ridiculous things happen, and there are plenty of women, but as for the racing about like loons, considering this is a Fast and the Furious movie, there’s very little in it. For some reason, Don and Paul Walker have gone from petty street racers to America’s most wanted criminals who’ve decided to become bank robbers in foreign countries.
Take the scene where Don and the gang need some really fast cars to beat a camera, they go ‘shopping’ to a local street race club and challenge them to a race, with the winner winning the other’s car. But they don’t show the race at all! They just talk smack with the race leader about who's going to beat who and it just cuts to them driving in with their new blue car, which the black guy from Transformers calls Papa Smurf’s car, I have to admit I laughed at that.
Instead of the racing scenes this movie, largely thanks to The Rock, has more action scenes that don’t involve the cars, oh sure there are the chase scenes and all the rest of it, but there seems to be more boots on the ground fight scenes. One scene has Don running away from a gang who wants him dead while The Rock is also there to bring him down too. Don is running away across a tin rooftop and then, from nowhere, The Rock bursts through a window in chase like a raging Tyrannosaurus! Vin Diesel’s face at this point is a work of art, I actually think they filmed this scene first with Vin not knowing about The Rock’s inclusion in the movie, only to then find himself being chased down by the raging behemoth! His face looks over his shoulder in sheer fear and you can just tell he’s thinking “S#@t it‘s The Rock!!”
So yes, The Rock is technically a baddie, but if you needed to be told that he’d change into a good guy by the end then you probably shouldn’t be watching a 12A movie. It’s so obvious, just by the trailer you know he’ll change sides.
How does this happen? Well, there’s a scene in the movie where The Rock captures them all, but they are ambushed by the gangs. Rocky and his men go out to fight and he ends up losing all his men! Don and company manage to escape, thanks to the interpreter whom The Rock has hired to help him, and they come to his aid, rescuing him and getting the hell out of there.
Once back in the van though, Don’s brother reveals a bullet wound in the horrible clichéd way we’ve seen about seven thousand times before. He dies, and it is probably the most pathetic death I’ve seen in a movie. He just…dies. And that’s it, no emotion, no nothing, Don just says “ta’ra bro” and is on his way. I’ve seen more emotion in Asda!
Don returns to the group, leaving his dead brother on a table behind him, like you do, and is greeted by dissent and a pathetic aura of defeat: “oh we cant do it Don, it’s too haaaard Don, wah wah.” You bunch of idiots you’ve got The Rock on your side! Yes that’s right in true dramatic fashion The Rock yells “I‘m in!” and he finally does the inevitable and joins them all. Obviously the others are back on-side, and why wouldn’t you be when The Rock’s on your team?
So what about the rest of the film I hear you ask. Okay, so it doesn’t have much car racing but it’s still packed with the ridiculously implausible! Things happen that really wouldn’t in the real world, and the film knows this and sets the tone immediately. At the start Don is in a bus with a load of other prisoners being transported to the naughty step I presume, and his mates appear in fast cars to free him. How do they do it? Well Paul Walker sits in front of the bus, on a slight angle and hit’s the brakes causing the bus to randomly flip itself over and over again like a badly tackled Argentine. Of course Don is unharmed completely and drives off with them.
I sat there in awe, my brother turned to me and pointed out it took a whole two minutes for the movie to pull out something ridiculous. Of course in reality the bus would have just ploughed through Paul Walker’s car, killing him instantly and annihilating his car completely. It’s effectively like throwing a box of cornflakes onto a train line and expecting it to flip an express train.
But that’s what people love about the Fast and the Furious, it’s big, daft and totally implausible. Ludacris breaks into a police station using a remote control car? Sure why not. A car can single handedly drag a giant bank vault weighing more than the moon? Absolutely!
Speaking of which, the scene most people will remember about this movie is the bank vault scene, where Don and Paul Walker attach the bank vault to their cars and drive away with it across Rio, trashing pretty much the whole city, killing no civilians of course, with about seven thousand police cars in tow and the gang leader whose money is sat in the safe. If there’s anything to learn from this it’s don’t put all your eggs in one basket....and dont go out in chase when The Rock's about town.
This scene is the big car chase scene of the movie, with the pair roaming around town causing as much havoc as they can for the cameras, while The Rock waits in the wings until he can kill the drug lord, which by the way he does in brilliant fashion. Once they’re all done Paul Walker meets up with Don who randomly gets with the interpreter from before. Beats me, but why not? Who says good writing should get in the way of two people wanting to be together?
You get the idea, this movie is the most ridiculous piece of cinema you’ll see in a long time, it is enjoyable enough if you don’t take it seriously but without The Rock it would be nothing. He storms through this movie like a determined bag of testosterone with no actual motive other than to put his boot to as many asses as humanly possible, why does he do it? Because he can! I think the franchise has been bled dry now though, I cant see The Rock coming back for more to be honest.
You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned much about the plot in this movie, it’s largely because there isn’t one. They’re pulling off a heist, that’s all you need to know. I would hope that this instalment will be the last, but I doubt it will. There’ll be a Fast and the Furious 6, and I imagine they’ll call it Sixth Gear, only to change it back to the Fast and the Furious 6 so it’s core audience wont get confused.
Final verdict: 3 Stars. Big, stupid, and incredibly implausible. Without The Rock it’d be one star stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment