Fast & Furious 5 (4½ Stars)

This is the best film in the Fast & Furious franchise so far. I felt tempted to give it five stars, but I expect the upcoming films to be even better, so I'll hold back with my top rating.

The film's official name is "Fast Five". It was made two years after "Fast & Furious 4", but the events begin immediately after the end of the previous film. At the end of the last film we saw Dominic Toretto, nicknamed Dom, being driven to a high security prison. "Fast & Furious 5" begins with Brian O'Connor (still an FBI agent, I presume) and Dom's sister Mia overturning the bus to free him. This puts Brian on the wrong side of the law, so he has to flee. They head to Rio de Janeiro, to the house of Dom's friend Vince, who we saw in the first film. There's animosity between Brian and Vince, because Vince is still annoyed with Brian's actions when he was a policeman.

Vince, Brian, Dom and Mia are hired to do a job stealing three cars from a train. Just their line of work! Dom double-crosses the others, because he knows that there's something special in one of the cars, and he wants it for himself. The job is for Herman Reyes, the biggest crime lord in Rio. He only wants this car, and he's stealing the other cars as well to cover up its importance. There's a computer chip which contains the addresses of the houses where Herman stores the money from his drug deals; ten houses with more than ten million dollars each in cash.

Dom tells the others he wants to steal this money. He calls in another six men from abroad, all specialists in robbery or fast driving. It's an impossible job, a suicidal job, but when so much cash is involved the criminals don't think logically.

As if the job weren't difficult enough already, the DSS (Diplomatic Security Service) sends a team to Rio to arrest Dom and Paul, because they're (wrongly) suspected of having murdered two DEA agents. The team is led by Luke Hobbs, a no-nonsense officer played by Dwayne Johnson. He soon realises that that Dom and Paul aren't the murderers, but he still tries to arrest them, because he believes in doing his job. He teams up with them to take down Herman Reyes, but he makes it clear that it's only a temporary alliance.

The car racing is noticeably missing from this film. There are only two car races in the film, but one of them is strangely skipped. Dom leaves to take part in a race, and then we see him returning home as the winner. Wasn't the budget big enough for another race? But we do see a big car chase (not race) at the end of the film in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The train robbery is also spectacular. If the budget really was limited, the money was well spent in the scenes that were filmed.

That makes it the most exciting film in the series so far. I can hardly wait to watch the sixth film. In a mid credits scene we find out that Dom's girlfriend Letty, presumed dead in the last film, is still alive. That will probably be the main theme of the next film.

Success Rate:  + 3.0

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