Speed, Action, and a Lot of Eye Candy

Caught the latest Fast and the Furious movie, entitled Fast Five, with the Dorm Barkada at Shangri La Cinemas this past weekend. We were spurred on to watch some fast-paced action after a very underwhelming Pacquiao-Mosley fight (A quick run-through of fight highlights: Pacquiao won via unanimous decision after dropping Mosley in the third round and referee Kenny Bayless misjudged a push by Mosely as a knockdown).

I have to admit I was not really a fan of the Fast and the Furious franchise. I only saw the first one and probably bits and pieces of the second, and that was all. I must say, though, that this fifth installment really did it for me. From the first car stunt that they pulled, the movie got me hooked to the action.
photo taken from http://www.rochellesychua.com/2011/05/fast-five-movie-review.html

As the movie rolled along, the plot turned from being a simple heist to becoming more personal and, for the central characters Dominic (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana  Brewster), a quest for freedom. They gather together a collection of characters from the previous FF films - Roman (Tyrese Gibson, who sang the Star Spangled Banner for Sugar Shane Mosley) from 2 Fast 2 Furious, Tej (Ludacris) from the first two FF films, Han (Sung Kang) from the fourth FF film Fast and Furious, Leo (Tego Calderon) from Tokyo Drift, Santos (Don Omar) from Fast and Furious and Tokyo Drift, and Giselle (Gal Gadot) also from Fast and Furious. With this crew, they plan to pull off a heist on the criminal mastermind of Rio de Janeiro. They are, however, faced with adversity, as Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) a special agent sent by the FBI has his own team going after them after Dominic, Brian, and Mia are accused of killing US DEA Agents when they stole three luxury cars from a train.

What follows is a fast-paced, action-packed, ever-exciting ride filled with enough humor, a lot of action, and a healthy smattering of eye candy. And the Easter Egg just makes sure you'll want a sixth installment coming.

All in all, the movie itself filled the need for me to catch something exciting after the Pacquiao fight. Though it didn't quite meet  the smartness of heist movies like The Italian Job or  tv series like Leverage, it was not a patsy in coming up with the twists. Diesel's character is a very unlikely mastermind, but his nonchalant manner was oddly good for the leader of the group. The banter between the two latino characters is a good source of humor, as is Gibson's antics and his own diatribes with Ludacris. Johnson provides the counterpoint for Diesel, and his Fury-like approach to getting his man is a great action mover. And Brewster, Gadot, and Elsa Pataky (who played rookie cop Elena Neves) added a combination of beauty and spunk required for such a guy-film as this.

Now, on to some bad press: What was up with Hobbs' non-stop sweating? All the other characters seemed to not sweat at all, and then you have Hobbs, who looked like he was being sprayed with water every take. I think the only time that Hobbs wasn't sweating was when he and his team first arrived in Rio.

This was highlighted even more by other characters seemingly unaffected by the weather or the surroundings. Brian and Mia run a parkour course around the Rio slums (and it's weird that Mia did all that) and fell through a pile of steel sheets, but not a scratch or drop of sweat. Because everyone else didn't seem to get dirty or sweaty, except to a certain extent Dom and Brian (Diesel and Walker), Hobbs' sweating stood out like a sore thumb.

Another nagging detail that didn't really sit too well with me was how firm a grasp of Rio de Janeiro Hernan Reyes (played by Joaquim de Almeida) had. To not have any form of government intervention in his operations - one could argue that he probably also bought out the government, but doesn't that look really bad for Brazil? - was really, uh, disappointing. I mean I can get it if the police is in his pocket, but to not have any government presence at all? I don't even know if the government was mentioned throughout the whole film.

All these of course are minor details that did not take away from how the film was really good. I also especially liked how the fight scene between Dom and Hobbs worked for the good of the film in that because of the shaky camera-work, extreme close-ups, and low lighting, the focus was less on two musclemen duking it out and more on the car sequences (Dom and Brian's car action sequence was of bigger scale and was better shot and lit).

In the end of it all, people watch Fast and Furious films for the cars and, to a good extent, the beautiful girls. This film being set in Rio just made everything sizzle and pop even more.

Fast Five gets eight and a half tire wrenches out of ten for me. Go to the official Fast Five link here.