REVIEW BY SIMON FEENEY
Fast & Furious 5 is the latest installment in the Fast and the Furious franchise, with Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto and Jordanna Brewster as his sister, Mia, both returning for the third time, while Paul Walker returns as Bryan O’Conner for the fourth time.

Continuing straight on from the fourth, the fifth starts with the high octane prison break set up at the end of the fourth, the un-numbered “Fast and Furious” and then settles into some long drawn out, slowly paced scenes of character development and interaction in poorly lit slum conditions to let you know how poverty stricken parts of Rio De Janeiro are.

It’s not long after that they arrange to take part in a car heist to earn some money, but one of the cars has a special component that will see all three tangle with the biggest crime lord of Brazil. But only after they put a crew together.

Everyone in “the crew” has been involved in one of the previous films, one way or another. Ludacris and Tyresse Gibson were in the second film, Sung Kang was a main player in Tokyo Drift. Matt Schulze was in the first and the rest were in the fourth installment, so it feels like a nice homecoming, bringing them all together, for the first time. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson appears as Federal agent Luke Hobb who has the job of hunting down the racers. He’s joined by Elsa Pataky, acting as his task force translator, who joined the Rio police after her husband was murdered. Elsa does a great job of relaying a sense of remorse and duty that works in making her an empathetic equal of Dominic.

The films greatest fault is that it swaps out the traditional imagery of the franchise (racing culture, music, fashion) for these lengthy interludes of touching human drama that manage to take the fast out and mute the furious.

In fact, even though there are plenty of action sequences through out the film, there’s only one scene where we get to see an actual race. We get given the promise of another but the actual race is completely removed, leaping to the obvious conclusion. It feels more like a kind of heist movie, mixed with a few nods to the previous films.

Justin Lin has, however, made a beautiful post card for Rio, not flinching from showing the poverty of the back streets, countered with the opulence of the city and beach life. It is, in many ways, an extended advert for visiting the city and it works.

In many ways it’s the script, by Chris Morgan, that lets it down, with unsatisfying situations and the kind of clichéd dialogue that you can speak along with the characters, as they say it, even through you’ve never seen it before.

Once the action starts up, Lin makes sure it’s well filmed, well paced and has a narrative flow that makes it easy to follow, no matter how over the top and impossible it may be.

For example, though out the movie, Dominic comes across as indestructible. He shrugs off blows from a crowbar, walks through a field of bullets, unscathed and knows how to drive a car so he can launch it through the air to take out his enemies. It could become difficult to invest concern for him, until he comes face to face with Luke Hobb, who, with his goatee, almost comes off as the evil parallel dimension version of Dom. As a special bonus for wrestling fans, he even manages to use a german suplex to defenestrate Vin Diesel during an impressive fight sequence.

It’s not necessary to see any of the previous films to enjoy “Fast Five” as all the characters fill their respective roles with such ease their interactions seamless give you the desire to like them but there are certain references and dialogue that make more sense if you’ve caught up with the fourth film, at the very least. There’s one section of dialogue and the special set up for the sixth film, after the credit animation but before the credit crawl.

Despite the pacing issues Fast Five is still an enjoyable movie and the action sequences do cry for the big screen to be enjoyed in full. Just be prepared for the slow and the sappy.