The answer, sure to please a frothing Fast and the Furious fan base, is: not nearly. The wheels have yet to come off this car-crazy franchise and the fifth installment, set in a much grittier Rio than the recent screen version populated by animated birds, puts several more gallons of gas in the tank.
There may be more brains in your bucket of popcorn, but this gleefully silly smash-’em-up heist film is sturdy enough to restore much of the fan goodwill torched by the horror movie that was the Diesel-free The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.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 that’s shelled out a cumulative $1 billion over a decade to follow the turbo-charged adventures of a gang of street-racers.
Fast Five (also known as Fast and Furious 5 outside North America) is primed to equal if not better the $71 million opening weekend of its 2009 predecessor and, if a sixth film were not already in the works, that kind of coin would guarantee it.
Director Justin Lin, back for his third go-around, opens it up in top gear; a mere 30 seconds elapse before the first screech of tires rents the air. Showing the blithe disregard for the laws of physics and logic that defines the series, former cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and girlfriend Mia (Jordana Brewster) use a matching pair of hot rods to bust Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) out of a prison transport van.
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