Movie Review – Fast Five (2011)

Today we’re reviewing Fast Five, the (you guessed it!) fifth film in The Fast and the Furious franchise.

Fast Five involves the driving gang busting Dominic Toretto out of a prison transport bus, and then making their way south to Brazil, now as wanted fugitives.  It doesn’t take long for them to cross paths with a corrupt businessman, and then plan a heist to steal $100 million of his money.  To complicate matters, this time the driving gang is also being pursued by a very determined member of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service.

Directed by Justin Li, Fast Five stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker in their respective roles of Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Conner.  Supporting them in the film are Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto, Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce, Ludacris as Tej Parker, Sung Kang as Han Seoul-Oh, Matt Schulze as Vince, Gal Gadot as Gisele Yashar, Elsa Pataky as Elena Neves, and Joaquim de Almeida as the villain Hernan Reyes.

Dwayne Johnson plays the role of Luke Hobbs, a Diplomatic Service Agent bound to catch the fugitives and return them to the United States.

Fast Five begins right at the tail end of Fast & Furious as Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is being transported inside of a prison bus.  The prison bus is surrounded by a group of drivers:  Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Leo (Tego Calderon) and Santos (Don Omar).  The four drivers cause the prison bus to crash, and then Dominic is freed.  Dominic, Brian and Mia become international fugitives as they cross the southern border and head to South America.  Dominic separates from Brian and Mia, but they all agree to meet down in Brazil.

Brian and Mia eventually reach Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where they reunite with their old colleague Vince (Matt Schulze).  It turns out that Vince escaped from the hospital and avoided prison by slipping out of the country and heading to Brazil.  He got married to a Brazilian woman and had a son, though it’s clear that he still has feelings for Mia.  He also still holds a grudge against Brian, and he blames him for their current situation.

Vince has criminal contacts in Rio, and he knows that the gang of criminals needs specialized help in stealing several high-end cars from a train.  Since Brian and Mia need the money, and it sounds like a doable job, he agrees to help Vince and his friends.

They board the train and then wait until the train is out in the countryside before making their move.  Brian and Mia are riding on board as passengers.  They steal a worker’s key card and gain access to a secure compartment with the cars.  It turns out that these particular cars were seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and there are several DEA agents on board the train as well.  When Brian calls Vince on a phone and tells him which train car has the cars, the gang cuts open a large hole in the side of that train car.

The plan is to basically have a flat-bed truck driving next to the train.  Using cables, each car is to be yanked onto the truck, and then the bed will be tilted back so that somebody can drive the car off to the rendezvous point.  Just as the gang is about to begin stealing the cars, Dominic arrives.  He’s cautious about this job as he doesn’t trust the other criminals.

The heist goes well until Dominic notices that one of the other criminals has special interest in a Ford GT40.  Dominic insists on Mia driving that car, and before she leaves with it, he tells her to go to an alternate destination.  She does so.  When the other gang members notice her behavior, they fight with Brian and Dominic.  The DEA agents eventually notice the robbery, and when they enter the car, one of the criminals shoots and kills three of the DEA agents.

Brian and Dominic are ultimately able to get out of the train, but Dominic’s car flies off a cliff and crashes into a river.  The escape goes even worse when the two of them are swiftly captured by the criminals, and they’re taken to Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), a powerful crime lord.  Reyes wants Brian and Dominic to be tortured until they reveal the location of the GT40, but the two of them overpower the guards and manage to escape.

The murder of the DEA agents is quickly blamed on the three American fugitives — Dominic, Brian and Mia.  To catch them, the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service sends in Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) to catch them.  Hobbs is basically a cross between a bounty hounter and a U.S. marshal, and he always gets his man.  Hobbs organizes his team and works with Rio police officer Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky) to begin hunting the fugitives.

Back at their safehouse, the guys disassemble the Ford GT40 to figure out why Hernan Reyes wants it so badly.  Vince arrives (after mysteriously vanishing during the train robbery), and he’s later caught trying to steal a computer chip out of the car.  When confronted by Dominic, Vince tries to explain that Reyes only wants that computer chip, and Vince was going to sell it to him for a high price.  Vince has proven to be disloyal, so Dominic makes him leave the hideout.  When Brian examines the computer chip, he discovers that it contains the locations of Reyes’ criminal empire, including the location of $100 million in cash.

The following day, the gang’s hideout is raided by members of Reyes’ gang.  To complicate matters, they’re also raided simultaneously by Luke Hobbs and his officers.  It’s a crazy chase scene as Dominic, Brian and Mia escape from everybody.  At one point Elena Neves tries to arrest Dominic, but he saves her life when Reyes’ gunmen shoot at them.

Once they’re clear of all of their pursuers, Dominic suggests that they split apart again and leave Rio.  Mia refuses to split apart as she announces that she’s pregnant with Brian’s child.  This changes everything.  Dominic changes his mind and decides to instead steal Hernan Reyes’ money, all $100 million in cash.  Brian knows that that much money will allow them to live in a non-extradition country and live new lives.  It’s a way to start over and live a clean life, one where he can be a father.

In order to pull off a heist against somebody as powerful and connected as Hernan Reyes, they’re going to have to establish a team.  They send out the word and recruit Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang), Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Ludacris), Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot), Leo (Tego Calderon) and Santos (Don Omar).  It’s an all-star team of the drivers in The Fast and the Furious series (except for Sean Boswell as the events in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift do not occur until *after* the movie Fast & Furious 6).

The gang uses the computer chip to find one of the locations where Hernen Reyes keeps some of his money.  They raid the location, but instead of stealing the money, Dominic burns it.  He tells the people to send the message to Reyes, and that they’re coming for the rest of his money.  This is actually a ploy to spook Reyes and to make him place all of his money in one secure location.

Sure enough, Reyes takes the bait and he places all of his cash in one location —- inside of a vault in the basement of the city’s police department.

The guys then do their reconnaissance on the police station and the vault, and they try to work out a plan to stealing the money.  So far the biggest problem is trying to find a way around all of the station’s cameras.  They try to drive around in a garage and see if they’re fast enough to beat the cameras, but none of the drivers are fast enough.  What they need to do is make the cars themselves invisible.

After a brief confrontation with Luke Hobbs, and Dominic later speaking to Elena, the guys break into the city’s police department.  Dominic, Brian, Roman and Hans all steal Dodge Charger police cruisers.  While heading back to their hideout, the four drivers each race each other down the street, each of them waging $1 million from their potential money gained from the heist.  Although Roman jumps the start, Brian ultimately wins the race.  It’s later revealed that Dominic intentionally loses so that Brian can use the prize money towards his new life with Mia and their unborn child.

The following day, Mia is in a market when she’s spotted by more of Reyes’ men.  Vince saves her from being abducted, and he takes her back to the hideout.  Since he helped Mia, Dominic allows Vince to be a part of their heist team.

Later, as the team is preparing for the heist, Luke Hobbs and his team raid the gang’s hideout.  Dominic and Luke have a fierce hand-to-hand fight.  Dominic wins the fight but he surrenders as the rest of his gang is surrounded by Luke’s agents.  Dominic, Brian, Mia and Vince are all arrested and transported to the airport in Hobbs’ vehicles.

As they’re being driven to the airport, Hobbs’ small convoy is ambushed by a large number of Reyes’ gunmen.  The cars are stopped and some of Hobbs’ men are killed in the gun battle.  Elena frees the prisoners, and they grab rifles and shoot back against the gunmen, killing all of them.  Hobbs and Elena are both saved, but Vince is mortally shot.  He dies when the gang returns to the hideout.

Instead of cutting and running, Dominic insists on going ahead with the heist.  Luke is the first person to volunteer to continue with the heist, joining forces with him until Hernan Reyes is killed.  The rest of the gang follows suit, and they prepare to carry out their heist.

The heist begins with Luke and Elena using an armored vehicle to crash into the garage at the police station.  Dominic and Brian then enter the garage with their modified Dodge Chargers.  They attach cables to the vault and yank it out of the wall with their cars.  The two of them then drag the vault along the city’s streets and try to make a getaway from the pursuing police cars.

At one point in the chase, Roman and Han use their police cars to crash the real police cars and give Dominic and Brian more time to escape.  They do so and eventually pull the vault to a long bridge.  Knowing that they cannot outrun the police cars, Dominic has Brian detach the cable so that he can escape.  Dominic then drags the vault and uses it as a wrecking ball to smash the police cars along with Reyes’ men.  Dominic eventually crashes his car, and Brian returns and comes to the rescue.  Luke then appears and shoots and kills Hernan Reyes.

Now that Reyes is dead, Luke focuses on the fugitives.  He allows both Brian and Dominic to run free with a 24-hour head start, but they cannot take any of Reyes’ money.  The vault has to stay right there.  After Brian and Dominic leave, Luke opens the damaged vault and realizes that he had been tricked.  *That* vault was empty.  The real vault was switched during the chase through the city, and it’s currently in the possession of Dominic’s crew at their new secret hideout.

Reyes’ vault is opened and the gang divides the mountain of cash.  A portion of it goes to Vince’s recently widowed wife and his son.  The rest of the gang separates, each of them taking their share of the heist.

Months later, Brian and Mia have made their way to a tropical beach.  They’re met by Dominic and his new girlfriend, Elena.  Fast Five ends with Brian challenging Dominic to a race to see who really is the better driver.

In a post-credits scene, federal agent Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes) approaches Luke Hobbes and gives him information about a recent truck heist in Berlin, Germany.  Luke isn’t interested until he opens the file and sees a picture of one of the drivers in the heist — Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez).  The only problem is that she was reported to have been murdered a while ago.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So is 2011’s Fast Five a good movie?

Yes, very much so.  It turns out that this is one of my favorites in The Fast and the Furious franchise.

Fast Five has it all from an exotic location to many characters from movies #1, #2 & #4 to street racing scenes to gunfire to plenty of fights to a major heist.  It’s basically a compilation of the best parts of the previous films.  On top of that, Fast Five has a good story and it introduces federal agent Luke Hobbs (played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).

For me, there really weren’t that many faults or problems with Fast Five.  The only catch is that you really need to see the other films in the series so that you’ll get the most out of this movie.

My wife and I saw this movie when it was released to the theaters.  At that point I had only seen the first film (*years* ago), and only clips from 2 Fast 2 Furious.  As a result, most of the movie bored me and I really didn’t have much interest.  Fast Five had the appearance of a mediocre heist movie that involved some fun action scenes.

Fast forward a few years.

After recently watching (and paying attention to) the first four The Fast and the Furious movies, Fast Five was almost a completely different experience.  This time I understood all of the characters and the stories surrounding their actions, and the film made a lot more sense.  It had a much bigger impact on me.  This was literally a night and day difference between the two viewings of Fast Five.

If you want to get the most out of Fast Five, it’s highly recommended that you see the previous films first.  Don’t try to jump into this movie like I did a few years ago.

Fast Five (2011) – movie trailer

That being said, Fast Five is definitely a movie geared towards fans of The Fast and the Furious movies.  This is probably the best movie (so far) in the series, and it’s definitely worth your time.