Fifth movie in The Fast and the Furious series, starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and introducing Dwayne Johnson to the saga.
Former cop Brian O'Conner (Walker) partners with ex-con Dom Toretto (Diesel). Since Brian and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) broke Dom out of custody, they've blown across borders to elude authorities. Now backed into a corner in Rio de Janeiro, they've got one last job to pull off to gain their freedom.
Hard-nosed federal agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) is assigned to track them down. But as his men tear through Brazil, Hobbs struggles to separate the good guys from the bad...
You know you’re not in for a reinvention of the wheel with this, the fifth The Fast and the Furious film, but surprisingly it turns out to be more entertaining than its recent predecessors. Much of this is attributable to the onscreen street racing being dialed down in favour of Ocean’s Eleven-style heist plotting and favela gunplay straight out of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It’s telling of how far the franchise has moved from its origins that we’re not even shown a mid-film street showdown, Fast and Furious 5 moving from macho posturing to race outcome in the blink of an eye and zero carbon footprint.
Don’t think for a second that cars aren’t pivotal to the film, however. They are the items that set up the film’s tussle between heroes and villains and take up the last fifteen minutes in an embrace of crashes and sheer physical impossibility. Returning stars Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Jordana Brewster are joined by Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot as pieces of machinery for the camera to drool over. They act like machines too, but chops aren’t really required nor expected with a director who’s getting pretty good at moving the pieces around. Justin Lim has made three of these films now (as well as several episodes of Community) and with the wider scope of this latest installment makes a case to move on to bigger things.
By Steve Newall, Flicks.co.nz
chicken is yummy
Awesome, awesome and more awesome. This was the best one ever.
slow start but the rest was entertaining, the rock is so cool
I'm not rating this on cinematic brilliance, but for an action movie it was really quite good, a lot better than the last couple in the franchise. It was great to see the characters from all the films finally come together!
This film is everything is should be. It knows what it is and it knows what it can do and it pushes both of these things to the full extent. Whilst purporting itself as a high-octane, adrenaline-filled fist-pump oozing with machismo, i got the sense that Fast Five also saw itself as a satirical commentary on the action genre itself. Whilst Diesel seems to be taking thing a bit too seriously, the Rock knows exactly what film he is in and abuses this knowledge to the fullest extent. I can see myself watching this film over and over in the coming years. A damned good job!
Tough on nuance, tough on the causes of nuance, this episode has the highest velocity and lowest IQ yet. See it on the biggest, loudest, dumbest screen you can find.
As usual, the film thrives on excess.
Utterly preposterous, but this car-crazy franchise is armor-plated.
Make no mistake, this is no masterpiece of the dramatic arts but it is probably the best since the original: lean, spectacular, funny and slightly less risible than its predecessors.
You'd think the Fast And The Furious franchise would've run out of gas by now. Think again.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 21st Apr 2011.
Release date: April 21st 2011.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
