Rating of
3/4
Testosterone Fueled Fun
Looneymanthegreat - wrote on 03/26/13
It is very rare that a movie is saved by a single sequence, but Fast Five would only be a tolerable action movie if it weren’t for the safe scenes.
The movie is a fairly cliché heist movie. That is necessarily a bad thing, but unlike other cliché heist flicks like Oceans Eleven the movie doesn’t do much in the way of character and style to set it’s self apart from the rest. It doesn’t help that the acting is mediocre as well, and that The Rock looks like he was waxed along with the fancy cars before each scene.
The action sequences are really what put this movie above others. They are directed expertly in a way which creates tension and excitement. They also are able to come up with some entertainingly over the top action sequences to match.
Sadly I wasn’t really able to get into it that much until the very end, the safe sequence. In the climax of the film our two main characters end up (for incredibly silly reasons) dragging a safe around on tow cables. There is nothing under the safe so they’re just dragging it. The scene makes no sense, is bafflingly staged and is absolutely wonderful. The last twenty minutes of Fast Five was able to cut right through the logic parts of my brain and access my primal urge to see dozens of cars destroyed by a giant safe being wielded like a club by a man driving a car. It’s one of the best action scenes I’ve ever seen.
As much as I loved the third act of this movie, I still can’t give it any more then 3 stars just because there were too many stupid images and bad actors. I recommend it to action fans, but if you can’t stand a movie that runs almost exclusively on testosterone then I’d give it a pass.
