Movie Review: 'Fast Five' one hell of a car-crime movie

Whoo, boy, if adventure thrillers are your meat, dine at the Fandango Galaxy cineplex in Carson City where "Fast Five," fifth in the series of "Fast and Furious" is whooping it up. Director Justin Lin has a ball with car chases, crashes, explosions and good crooks vs. bad crooks in Rio de Janeiro.

Two hulks star in this outing, Vin Diesel as ringleader Dom and Dwayne Johnson as DSS agent Lucas Luke Hobbs, who always gets his man (almost always). Both have pecs of slabbed stone plus biceps to match. It doesn't matter that neither is really an actor; with a dazzling plot and plenty of action through Rio's streets,they're all one could ask for.

FBIer Paul Walker as Brian O'Conner frees Dom from a prison bus and the two hole up with Canon's girl friend Mia (Jordana Brewster) and take part in a heist of some fancy cars (at behest of a Mexican drug king) from a train. Little do they know that that cars are DEA property.

This is without a doubt the best heist scene ever filmed with a pickup desert buggy grabbing the cars so the good guys and girls can drive them off. (One is a Ford GT-40, famed as winner of the Le Mans 24 hours twice back when American car companies had imagination; I know, I covered those races).

After this incredible scene one could expect a slackening of imagination but not so. Rio streets become a race track as the good guys yank a giant vault out of a police station and with muscle cars tow it around Rio. And I thought the train-car scene was out of sight; this is the moon shots all rolled up in one.
Forget realty; this is just a magic computer chase. The DSS agent winds up with an empty vault while the good crooks get away with $100 million.

I usually don't dote on such film antics, but this is a movie so far from the usual car-chase-explosions-machine gun battles that it's hard to ignore such excellent plotting and technical skills. It's the Cadillac of thriller-road-race-good guys (nice crooks) vs. bad guys (drug dealers).

Acting? That's not what this is about, Vin can smile, however.

Go along with it all, suspend disbelief and let it roll over you. Won't hurt and it isn't going to send teens out on the road to self-destruction. They won't come any better this year. Yeah, not Academy Award fare, true, but movie-goers flocked to it and rightly so. 'Tain't art what is these days in Hollywood?

— Sam Bauman

Cast
— Vin Diesel as Dominic "Dom" Toretto
— Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbx
— Paul Walker as Brian O'Conner
— Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto
— Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce
— Ludacrisas Tej Parker
— Matt Schulze as Vince
— Sung Kang as Han Lue
— Gal Gadot as Gisele Harabo
— Tego Calderon as Tego Leo
— Don Omar as Rico Santos
— Joaquim de Almeida as Hernan Reyes
— Elsa Pataky as Elena Neves
— Michael Irby as Zizi

Directed by: Justin Lin
Produced by: Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel, Michael Fottrell
Written by: Chris Morgan
Music by: Brian Tyler
Cinematography: Stephen F. Windon
Editing by: Kelly Matsumoto, Fred Raskin, Christian Wagner
Running time: 130 minutes, rated PG-13