I can write with confidence that fans who enjoyed the first four films in the Fast and Furious series will love this fifth instalment. The boys -Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) and Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel)- are reunited in a series of amusingly OTT action sequences on the run in Rio, needing to pull off one last job to buy their freedom and bring down the criminal kingpin who controls the city.
There is a bit of a family feel to this Fast and Furious soap opera as Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster), Dom’s sister, is expecting Brian’s child. Walker plays an amiable and uncomplicated doting father-to-be, like a tow-haired graduate of the Keanu Reeves school of acting with just a smidgen more subtlety. The revelation of Mia’s pregnancy also brings out an endearingly avuncular performance from Vin Diesel in his occasional pauses from smashing things up. Dwayne Johnson –better known as The Rock- brings out the more familiar hard case side of Diesel as he plays a Diplomatic Security Service agent sent from the US to arrest and extradite the boys, Brian and Dom, after the Feds have been mistakenly informed that they have shot a couple of DEA agents during an utterly implausible but beautifully shot train robbery. The obligatory Rock versus Diesel fisticuffs scene will no doubt delight those who relish such spectacles. I am pleased to report that the right character ends up on top.
Dom, who was bereaved in an earlier movie, is fortunate that the one Brazilian cop that The Rock has recruited as a translator is a beautiful widow of the Favelas (Elsa Pataky) who progressively falls for Dom’s raffish criminal charms during a series of failed attempts to arrest him, and helps him recover his pep in the process.
Stereotypes are deployed shamelessly throughout: almost all the Brazilian policemen are shown as bungling grease balls and almost all the Brazilian women are shown as bred bespoke for the bikini. Rio itself is portrayed, presumably with some accuracy, as hopelessly corrupt, but also desperately beautiful in its vistas and even in the squalor of its higgledy-piggledy slums.
The stunts and action scenes only lapse into tedium once or twice; for the most part they are great entertainment and add both levity and grit. In the hardware there is something for the automotive connoisseur as well as something for the sad case boy racer: a few of the cars are beautiful; quite a few of them are irredeemably naff. The dialogue is intermittently amusing, and never takes itself seriously enough to become annoying. Thankfully, the writing lacks the ponderous self-seriousness which, for example, ruined the last Bond movie.
Vin Diesel was apparently paid $15m to make this film. Admittedly that might not be worth much when the Fed has finally finished printing greenbacks, but it’s still $4m more than his character is set to score from the eponymous Rio Heist in the story itself. No wonder a cheeky smile is often playing across his features as his character cheats death and taxes. Throughout the movie a thought kept recurring to me: this film must have been incredibly fun to make. When the suntanned characters aren’t burning up the tarmacadam in fabulous racing toys they are to be found sitting around with smiles, laconic quips and bottles of beer never far from their lips. Sign me up for number 6.
