Fast Five (Revisited)

It's finally here! After a long shoot and apparent on set drama, the newest addition of the Fast & Furious franchise is about to hit theaters in its eighth installment, I know right?, this weekend. As such we'll be going through the three films that made this a billion dollar franchise to see what was added or changed each go round. Today we start with Fast Five, the movie that truly launch this franchise into action-movie gold.

Following the events of Fast & Furious, Dominic Toretto has been arrested and Brian O'Connor is no longer working for the police. Especially after Brian and Dom's sister Mia help Dom escape police custody and go on the run. Now in Rio looking to make some money, Dom and Brian run afoul of a local crime boss and decide to rip him off to find a non-extradition locale to live. However, the crime boss' goons aren't the gangs only concern, because Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is hot on their trail.

I've said this more times than I can count, but this is the movie that set the franchise in a new more interesting and ridiculously fun direction. It's always been full of sappy melodrama, bad jokes, and an insane car stunt or two, but this one finally kicked things up a notch. Here's how.

Action Scene Variety

For the first four films in the franchise, The Fast & The Furious was only about racing with maybe a small shootout or major car stunt per film. Fast & Furious may have added a foot chace or two, as well Dom's apparent Sherlock level capabilities to recreate car crime scenes, but Fast Five is an entirely different animal. After an opening crash, we get a giant mixture of fist-fights, chase scenes, street racing, and car related fun all at the patented Joel Silver action every 15 mins clip. 

This serves a dual function because it allows Justin Lin to show off his action-filmmaker muscles and also prevents the audience from getting bored. If you see nothing but nonstop street racing your audience and interest levels are greatly decreased.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

Any movie person worth their salt, could already put The Rock's purpose together as soon as they saw the trailer. He's there to be a black and white moral lawman on Dom's trail, they'll eventually fight in some form of a draw, and he'll end up on Dom's side (for now). What fans didn't expect is for Johnson to deliver possibly his best action movie performance to date. He's super serious, obviously physically imposing, makes a ton of wise-cracks, and has all of the no nonsense intensity a silly series like this needs. Put against the mumble speak of Vin Diesel, it works even better.

Creative Insanity

This other precedent this movie put into place is the laws of "physics and reason be damned" level of insanity to the set pieces (it goes double for anything car related). I'd actually argue that aside from the melodramatic throughline of family, the new set pieces with are almost always a perfect combination of "that's so awesome" and "that's hilariously dumb," are the series defining attribute. Does the jump off a car before in plummets into a canyon river make any sense? Nope. But is it fun  to watch? Absolutely. And the same can be said for the safe dragging finale which has so many logic problems it would be break IMDB is broken down properly, but is too fun to deny.

Fast Five may not take the series in a smarter direction, but by bringing in The Rock and an undeniable sense of fun, they made it infinitely more entertaining. Tomorrow we look at the team building fun of Fast & Furious 6.