Trailer Review: FAST FIVE

This movie looks crazy, ridiculous, but dammit if I'm not ready to blow 15 bucks on an IMAX ticket to see it!

The Fast and Furious franchise has had it's ups and downs (2Fast,2Furious), but had a slight resurgence with it's third installment Tokyo Drift, mostly because it abandoned the title characters and followed an entirely different group of characters and style of driving. At the end of that movie Vin Diesel makes a cameo that brought us the fourth film, simply titled Fast and Furious and now, Fast Five.

FF4 brought back all the original characters from the first movie and was by far the strongest of the series. Although it had a cliche villain in the form of a drug trafficker, the story was solid based on the characters history with each other and the loss of a key player, Michelle Rodriguez's "Letty". A moment of silence please.

Director Justin Lin has definitely pumped some much needed NOS back into the series that started with FF:Tokyo Drift. Much like what Len Wiseman accomplished with the 4th Die Hard, Lin has gone the route of good ol' fashion stunt work in complex action sequences, which has made the series more fun to watch in my opinion. He's also made this potentially one-time cast into a modern day Magnificent Seven-esque group of sorts. Not to mention giving us the coolest edition to the group into the form of Han, a drifter in Tokyo Drift.

I know it's been nothing but a constant praise for the series and Fast Five, but here are my bones that need a pickin'.

Fast Five collects characters from all four movies before it, to give us a Marvel-team up kind of adventure. The trailer was rockin' until I saw Tyrese and Ludacris.

Tyrese returns as Roman Pierce, whose wanna-be gangster attitude from 2Fast2Furious was one of the most annoying additions to the series. Perhaps under the care of Justin Lin that will change but I'm not holding my breath. Also, Ludacris, who was in the same basterd movie, made mention that his character doesn't even race anymore because of a previous accident. So why is he here?

I honestly would have loved to have seen Lucas Black and Bow Wow from Tokyo Drift.

We now come to the paradox of the character Han who sadly died in Tokyo Drift. But was in the opening action sequence in FF4 which in the FF timeline was revealed to be a prequel to Drift, so it made sense that he was there and now is part of Fast Five. I cringe at what the explanation will be for his resurrection but I hope it's not a lame one.

Another pitfall this trailer falls into is simply showing us way to much in the form of action. It looks like there are two different action sequences that we get too much of a preview of. A movie franchise as successful as this one could most definitely have gotten away with a teaser trailer. One of those scenes has Paul Walker and Vin Diesel going "car diving", which looks so 'effin cool, but should have cut away sooner from going off the cliff. I hope there is something even bigger than that sequence in this movie cause if thats it, then it blows that I've already seen it.

Second to last, the title of this movie sounds like a porno. No one can argue how terrible this title is. Some personal suggestions of mine are; FURIOUS, FURIOUSLY FAST, VROOOM!!, FAST to the 5th POWER, or FAST AND FURIOUS 5.

Lastly, the wild card;THE ROCK! I simply love that he's in this and that we are going to see a throw down between him and the Diesel. It's kinda nuts and a little corny that he's in this movie but what are the FF movies but nuts and corny fun.

Overall, Fast Five looks like the fun, over the top, tagline spewing, car crashing, money stealing, half naked girl wearing action movie that sometimes you just need to see. This is definitely an opening weekend movie for me. I've heard rumblings of a 6th and 7th movie, and although these are fun movies; how long can this really go on for?

The final review will be when the credits roll and the house lights go up.

Fast Five runs the red light to IMAX and regular theaters near you on April 29th, 2011

Deuces,
StuntmanBob






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