Review

High-octane trash, but you will go "Ohhhhhh!"

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Fast Five may be lizard-brain escapism—and there’s something unsettling about how it lays waste to Rio’s desperately poor favelas—but nonsense this well-orchestrated is a rare and precious thing.

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The result is the most exciting, visually jazzy, and absurd entry in the series. Justin Lin directed a script by Chris Morgan.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.

Review

Big crashes, lithe women and roiling testosterone, not to mention the addition of The Rock as a fire-and-brimstone federal agent – there's plenty to pull in the (mostly) young male audience.

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So the movie is what it is, a fun and for the most part competent albeit at times ridiculous action movie. The sequence is basically a gigantic middle finger to the fourth movie and will have most in the crowd cheering, but just had me thinking WTF and then I started shaking my head.

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Both LIn and Morgan know their limits, slashing the dialogue to a bare minimum and wasting very little time setting up the rudimentary plot before allowing the engines to rev. But they also take their work seriously-- both know it takes serious effort and smarts to make a dumb action movie that's this good. With the Fast and Furious franchise showing no signs of stopping, it's a relief to see the filmmakers aren't afraid to tweak the formula and prove there's still plenty of gas left in this tank.

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There are several things I definitely cannot say about Fast And Furious 5. I can't say concise. I can't say that it's intelligently written, or particularly well acted. But as a larger-than-life action movie that has the requisite budget to total an entire city’s worth of cars, I definitely can say this is high-octane, supercharged stuff - stuff that had my inner 12-year-old clapping along with goofy, wide-eyed appreciation.

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Review

Features some of the most exhilarating action sequences the screen has seen in years.

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No, the script by Chris Morgan (who also wrote #3 and #4) won’t win any awards, but frankly, it doesn’t have to—that’s not why it’s here. If you want good writing, rent The King’s Speech or something. If you want a sure sign that summer is right around the corner, and if you want a crazy-fun adrenaline trip to prove it, Fast Five is your man.

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Sequel/Prequel Fast Five Mixes, Matches and Somehow Works

Fast Five is not the movie it could be. But maybe it’s the movie it ought to be. Action movies in which the cutting is so frenetic and choppy that you can barely discern who’s coming from where are a nickel a dozen, and Fast Five is one of them.

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Review

It's a movie for audiences who think exuberance in movies is more important than sense or logic and who can laugh at a movie and like it at the same time.

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Review

It delivers the most entertaining "Fast and Furious" adventure while also getting 2011's summer movie season off on the right lead foot.

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Review

Inventive action sequences, deft stunt work and breathtaking cinematography make for revved-up fun.

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In "Fast Five", Director Justin Lin and a cast spanning the last five Fast and Furious movies combine to bring us the best film in the series.

Fast Five isn’t high art, nor is it trying to be. There is so much testosterone in this movie that even women in the audience may leave with a mustache. It fulfills the traditional summer movie pre-requisites and has a ton of explosions, gun battles and fistfights, just like you would expect. In that sense, it is a very, very traditional film. If you are looking for that one unique snowflake in the snow storm of summer movies, this aint it.

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"Fast Five" and the new action-movie brutality

All action movies appeal to young, multiracial audiences -- that's axiomatic in the film industry -- but at the risk of descending into essentialism, I think Lin speaks that language in a way many white directors simply can't.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.

Beyond Bromance: Fast Five

Five's often fascinating study in absence over presence extends to the performances.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.

All in all this was a pretty great film for anybody who is a fan of the series. I don’t think this will make you a fan if you didn’t already care for the other movies but check it out because with the new “summer blockbuster” route they’re taking, you’ll definitely get some enjoyment out of it.

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Review

It's great to see The Rock re-embracing the action genre, and when his clobbering match with Diesel finally happens, it's as outlandishly room-wrecking as I'd hoped.

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Review

Satisfies on a visual and visceral level while leaving the intellectual one cold and shriveled and starving.

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The final chase is killer. And the getting there actually is half the fun. Fast Five will push all your action buttons, and some you haven't thought of. So what if you hate yourself in the morning.

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Like Pixar’s Cars, but more cartoony.

Full of foot-to-the-floor action, bikini babes and gleaming hoods, /FF5/ makes no attempt to adjust the formula. But why should it? Converts may be scarce, but fans will lap up its major-league mayhem. Oh, and stay for the end-credits cliffhanger…

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Does summer truly start with the premiere of Fast Five? And if so, what kind of summer is this going to be?

From "soup to nuts," consider Fast Five a sort of Empire Strikes Back of the Fast and Furious series. Like its Star Wars forerunner, the film serves as the middle installment for a new trilogy (check out our video interviews with the cast where Diesel explains this), it ups the excitement level, completely changes the tone, and leaves audiences with one hell of a cliffhanger. And, yes… that means you need to stay all the way through the credits.

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Review

Tough on nuance, tough on the causes of nuance, this episode has the highest velocity and lowest IQ yet. See it on the biggest, loudest, dumbest screen you can find.

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Vrooooom! Vrooooom! Flex ’Em if You Got ’Em

The only time you won’t be watching the screen is when your eyes have squeezed shut because you’re laughing so hard.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.

But for all its absurdity and the family friendly bloodlessness (despite the copious violence), it spins along very smoothly and efficiently.

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The overlong sequence is coarsely conceived and devoid of physical logic—it's as if digital technology, which makes everything possible though not necessarily plausible, had been used to expunge any remaining cultural memory of the elegantly constructed movie chases pioneered by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Still, geniality carries the day.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.

Still fast, if not quite as furious

The Fast and the Furious movies haven’t exactly gotten better as they’ve gone along—although Tokyo Drift–er Justin Lin, taking his third turn behind the franchise’s wheel, is at least a competent hack.

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Sequel should give the back story a brake and cut to the car chase

After endless scenes of poring over blueprints and analyzing security cameras at a police station whose vault holds (exactly?) $100 million, the boys just ram through a wall with a giant Hummer and drag the safe away with fast cars.

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“Fast Five” wrecks half of Rio in magnificently over-the-top fashion, and, if you go in expecting a movie that is both ridiculous and ridiculously entertaining, you shouldn’t be disappointed. This is the kind of movie where they throw two grenades at you, because one grenade is never enough.

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