REVIEW: 'Fast and Furious 5'

Fifth movie in The Fast and the Furious series, starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and introducing Dwayne Johnson to the saga. Now playing nationwide. See here for movie times and watch the trailer.
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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.

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