In the month or so leading up to the release of Fast Five, I made fun of my wife’s increasing excitement. She has a soft spot for big dumb action movies, and an even softer one for big dumb Vin Diesel.
From my ivory cinephile’s tower, both she and the film felt like easy targets. And when The Onion serves up a gem like ‘Today Now! Interviews the 5-year-old Screenwriter of Fast Five‘, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
But in the aftermath of my smug superiority, it is with great humility that I report that Fast Five turns out to be one of the best times I’ve had at the movies in ages. It’s big and dumb, yes, but it’s also fun, funny and exciting — exactly what the summer ordered.
You needn’t have seen Fast and Furious films one through four to appreciate this one, though the cast features stars from each of the installments. The first film’s chief protagonists, played by Vin Diesel and Scott Walker, are back and on the run in Rio. They cross paths with a ruthless crime lord and agree to do “one last job” before disappearing for good.
Fast Five then morphs into a cross between Ocean’s Eleven and The Fugitive. The boys assemble a crew to pull off a complicated heist (which of course involves driving very nice cars in a manner that is both fast and, yes, furious). And on their tail is a hard-ass federal agent, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, beefed up to an almost surreal degree and chewing on hard-boiled dialogue so corny that his biggest acting challenge must have been keeping a straight face.
Diesel and Johnson are the new breed of pumped up action heroes — they’ve taken the place of Schwarzenegger and Stallone. But they bring a multi-cultural appeal and a sensitivity (both have starred in successful family films) that makes them more endearing. Their inevitable face-off in Fast Five is an exciting collision of muscle and star power, and even when they’re beating the hell out of each other, you know that these guys are destined to team up.
The rest of the cast is wonderfully diverse — it’s a Benetton ad of an action film. I think one of the reasons these films appeal so much to today’s youth is that the ensemble reflects the racial and cultural mish-mash they’re used to in their own lives.
Watching this film on opening weekend in Miami was an experience in itself. Sometimes a crowd can make or break a filmgoing experience, and in this case the enthusiasm was infectious. We were a collective who agreed to check our brains at the door and ooh, aah, laugh and applaud at all the right moments. I half expected us to break into the wave.
My wife loves to say “that’s why I go to the movies” after seeing a film like this. I half agree. I go to the movies for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes to think, sometimes to feel, sometimes to be taken somewhere I’d never be able to go otherwise. And yes, sometimes to watch pretty people perform spectacular stunts and blow shit up real good.
Fast Five is a beach read. I loved it cover to cover.
Meet Me In Montauk 
The key is whether they perform those stunts and blow things up in a peppy enough fashion. Too often, these big, dumb action films drag the action on for sooooo long that I become bored rather than excited by what is happening on the screen. If this film avoids that trap, then I’m tempted to see it.
I do want to take a little bit of issue with your observation that Vin Diesel and The Rock are somehow action heroes for a new generation. How are they more multicultural than Arnold Schwarznegger?! Who, by the way, had his own family film appeal (Kindergarden Cop, Twins) before trading in acting for politics. They’re just the younger version – otherwise, I think they share most other traits with their predecessors.
Having just returned from seeing Thor, I couldn’t agree more that sometimes you just want to have fun at the movies. Sounds as though Fast Five served that purpose magnificently.
By the way, I continue to be amused by the films that earn an instant review from you (such as this one), while others (such as your current #1 film, Source Code) could wait months before getting any respect. What’s up with that?
Schwarzenegger is Austrian… that seems like a single culture to me! Diesel and Johnson are both mixed race… black, Italian, Samoan, Filipino. That’s what I mean by multi-cultural… the blend.
Don’t look at the lag in my review time as a lack of respect. In some cases it’s just the opposite. I feel that Source Code deserves a more thorough examination than I’m usually prepared to deliver. But a movie like this I can write up in ten minutes.
Sounds like a lot of fun, maybe we’ll give it a try.