Fast Five

Just to be clear, I love action movies and so naturally I was extremely excited to see Fast Five. In fact, I watched the previous four movies in preparation for watching it, which I would actually recommend because it is absolutely hilarious but don’t worry, its not necessary for understanding the fifth film. Anyways, the film begins with a recap of the ending of the fourth movie where Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) is sentenced 25 to life in a maximum security prison and then is in the prison bus heading to jail when Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) and others surround the bus in their fast cars and quirky smiles. Naturally they flip the bus with impossible car moves and no one gets hurt but Dom is able to escape with the others, making them all fugitives. I’m not going to recap the whole movie because its kind of complicated and long but altogether, the whole gang from all of the previous movies (except for Sean Boswell from Tokyo Drift, thank god) comes together to help Dom and others pull “one last job” in order to get a lot of money so that they can “be free” and disappear forever, but then their plans are made much more complicated by a corrupt politician, Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) and crazy federal agent, Luke Hobbes (Dwayne Johnson) who is determined to bring them back to America and to justice.


Anyways, as an action movie junkie this movie was really enjoyable and had some very surprising positives such as there were some actual deep moments in the movie that weren’t painful to watch, all of the characters had really good chemistry and for once, and the police didn’t just randomly forgive Paul Walker and promote him like they do EVERY MOVIE. However, this movie is part of the Fast and the Furious franchise so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Yes they constantly make extremely sexist comments and most of the shots of women only include their butts, and yes, most of the action scenes are completely ridiculous (jumping off a cliff and surviving, Vin Diesel breaking through solid concrete, cars never run out of gas or kill innocent pedestrians... I could go on), and yes the plot makes absolutely no sense, and yes Dwayne Johnson’s beard looks like pubic hair, but they come together to make an action packed movie that is extremely entertaining.

So here it is, do not see this movie if you are looking for a quality plot with character development, but if you are looking for an entertaining movie, or if you just want to see a fight between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson (I swear they just gave Dwayne Johnson a beard so you could tell them apart) I would highly recommend this film. Just remember, don’t take anything too seriously, sit back, relax and remember to laugh during Vin Diesels dramatic stares, they’re priceless.

- Alexis Cupp

Since I am blinded by my love of dumb action movies, I let my roommate rate it, who usually doesn’t like action movies, and she gave it 3 out of 4 stars because she found it, “really funny” so there you go, take that as you will.