HTTPreviews: Fast Five

Director: Justin Lin

Writer: Chris Morgan

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Dwayne Johnson

Music By: Brian Tyler

Distributed By: Universal Pictures

Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Rating: PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence and action, sexual content and language"

6.3/10


This weekend, I went and saw ‘Fast Five’. I had medium expectations for this movie, mostly because the reviews from places like RottenTomatoes and Metacritic were very positive, which were the highest of the series at 78%. Once again, this is a series movie within a series that I love, so hopefully I don’t slant this too much.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, mainly because of the action scenes. They were fantastic, and I’m really underselling it here. There was a badass fistfight between Vin Diesel and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and it was the most epic, knock down, kick in the face fight of all time. Two massive, scary ass dudes just punching it out for at least three minutes. It was just... Ugh. Just so fantastic. I loved it. All the action scenes were like that, though. Justin Lin has a really good idea of how to create suspense and power within the scenes. Fantastic.


However-

The dialogue was terrible. Just freaking awful. I have never heard such wooden dialogue. The acting wasn’t great, but, truly, the dialogue was that bad. I consider all three of the main cast to be decent actors, and it was difficult to listen, even with Paul Walker. Not as much as ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’, but thank god I wasn’t around to review that piece of shit. Anyways, the dialogue was awful. Especially Dwayne Johnson’s. Who ever decided to make his accent Southern rapist made an awful mistake. But once again, I think that was the screenwriters fault, and not even really their fault. Its a fault of the series, really. Hopefully FF6 will be better in that respect.

Besides that, I loved the movie. So much fun to watch, and the dialogue gets better as the film progresses. Its just the first part of the movie that makes it bad. For whatever reason, it gets about fifteen times better after the first chase scene with Reyes men, The Rock and his team, and the main characters. I thought it was a really cool way to show off the favelas of Brazil, and to show the epic fighting skills of The Rock’s team. On a side note, I really liked that the black FBI agent from the show ‘Numb3rs’ had a part in it. I love and miss that show. Some of the dramatic scenes were a little cheesy, and looked like they tried way too hard to make it sad and harrowing. But it gets better, and the ending is great.

One last thing: I thought it was really good how they spread the acting around. Vey ensemble, not much of central character. It was better for it.

Grade: 6.3/10

Hunter Bishop Movie Ratings System Guidelines:

1 -1.9: Troll 2

2-2.9: The Room

3-3.9: Laura Croft

4-4.9: Spider Man 3

5-5.5: Da Vinci Code

6-6.9: Scott Pilgrim

7-7.9: The Departed

8-8.9: Inception

9-9.9: The Dark Knight

10-10+: L.A. Confidential