Ludacris

REVIEW: Fast Five (2011)

Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) along with his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster and friend and former-FBI Agent Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) are on the run and backed into a corner. After they cross paths with a powerful Brazilian drug lord in Rio, they call in old friends to pull off one last job to buy their freedom. But all the while federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is on their tail.

Following on from Fast & Furious, Fast Five continues the trend of stepping away from its street racing roots becoming a heist film and it’s all the better for it. It still has some great car racing action, but a lot of it either pushes forward the plot or is a nice character moment. It has all the usual heist tropes, but they come together with characters you’ve seen across the previous four films means which makes them extra fun and enjoyable.

Moulding characters into the roles of heist archetypes like the techy (Ludacris’s Tej), the quick talker (Tyrese Gibson’s Roman), and the social chameleon (Sung Kang’s Han) is handled really well and it feels like an extension of the characters we’ve already meant rather than a complete reinvention.

Having all these characters come together and become friends, some of which previously knew Dom before while some only knew Brian, fully cements the key theme of this franchise – family. It’s a theme that had been there from the start but really, it’s once this cast of actors and characters are finally together that you properly start to connect with that message.

Dwayne Johnson is a brilliant addition to the cast and he is a formidable foe for Walker’s Brian and Diesel’s Dom. Really, Hobbs is a combination of the two of them; he has the knowledge of the legal system of Brian, the physical strength of Dom, and is just as loyal to his team as the two of them are to their own family.

The action spectacle of Fast Five is top-notch too. There are foot chases through a favela, an opening set piece with a heist on a train, brutal fistfights, and then there’s the climax which sees a lot of destruction on the streets of Rio. All the action sequences are exciting, well-shot and easy to follow and above all, they are really fun.

Fast Five is a thrill ride from start to finish. The false starts, and not so great films that came before it, can be forgiven because this one is a fantastic blend of action, intrigue, fun and above all – likeable characters that are one big family. Fast Five really set the bar for what the rest of the franchise could be. 5/5.

REVIEW: 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

After getting busted for street racing, disgraced former cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) is enlisted to bust dangerous criminal Carter Verone (Cole Hauser). Brian recruits his childhood friend and fellow street racer Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) to bring down Verone, and in the process earn their freedom.

2 Fast 2 Furious is the first film in the franchise without Vin Diesel and instead there’s the chemistry between Walker and Gibson that sees you through this film. Maybe Paul Walker just had natural charm and chemistry with everyone? Having Roman be a childhood friend of Brian’s means you get a bit more of his backstory, and as the two of them have known each other for so long, there’s easy camaraderie with each of them calling the other out on their antics when needed. The filmmakers did well not to try and replicate the Brian and Dom dynamic, and instead created a very different foil for Brain in Roman. Roman is loud, brash and kinda ridiculous but he’s a guy with a heart of gold under all that bluster and Gibson and Walker make the not-great bantering dialogue work.

Helping Brian and Roman on their mission is undercover agent Monica Fuentes (an underused Eva Mendes). She’s undercover working for Verone and the moments where the danger is truly apparent for her, Brian and Roman, you can see her calm façade start to crack. Other characters who help out Brian are his friends; garage owner Tej (Ludacris) and racer Suki (Devon Aoki). Suki is a character I’d love to make an appearance in another Fast & Furious film, she’s so cool, a great driver and says so much with just a look.

2 Fast 2 Furious has some good car chases but it’s a car decoy scene in the final act that really steals the show. It’s inventive and touches on the set pieces full of characters coming together, both minor ones and main ones, to help solve a problem that become more frequent in future films in the series.

2 Fast 2 Furious is fun, fast-paced and the car chases are sharper than those in the previous film. It sets up a great new character dynamic, and the sometimes-cheesy dialogue can be forgiven as it really is a fun film that’s perhaps more joyful than the first one as it refuses to take itself seriously. 3/5.