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Movies & TV

21st May 2018

Our favourite action movie of the decade is on TV this week

Rory Cashin

Everything about this movie proves it should not have worked. But against all odds, it worked better than anyone could have predicted.

It was the same director as the previous two entries in the series, which are still widely considered to be the worst two.

It was steering away (car joke!) away from the underground racing scene that had defined the previous four movies, in the hopes of becoming a heist movie, and who was to say that was what anybody wanted to see these characters do?

The previous movie had killed off one of the series’ best characters… but this was before “death” in this franchise was really more subjective than reality. Which is the exact same way the franchise treats gravity, come to think of it…

The movie itself ended up with no less than THREE official titles – Fast Five, Fast & Furious 5, Fast & Furious: Rio Heist – and that level of confusion never bodes well.

Despite all of that though, the fifth entry in the burly-men-drive-burly-cars-and-sometimes-punch-each-other series was a massive success, pulling in over $625 million at the box office, and going to inspire the series to continue to get bigger and bigger which each subsequent sequel, to the point where when someone makes a joke about Vin and the gang heading to space for Fast & Furious 10 (Fast & Fur10us?), nobody bats an eyelid.

Just ask The Onion, who interviewed the “five-year-old screenwriter” of the movie about his work process:

Clip via The Onion

So how did this movie, which based on the earlier movies was perilously close to running on fumes (car joke), end up so good? And not just good, but arguably the best action movie of the decade?

Other people – on this very website – have made compelling arguments for other action movies to be deserving of the title, but the giddy mix of high-octane action sequences, great chemistry between the leads, and a real sense of fun helps push this one over the finish line first (car joke).

It also helps that the movie has a fantastic international cast, which is an easy sell when it comes to making more bank at the global box office: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Gal Gadot (you forgot Wonder Woman was in this, didn’t you??), Tyrese Gibson, Elsa Pataky, Sung Kang (as the gloriously named Han Seoul-Oh) and, oh yeah!, this was the one that had The Rock drop in and kick things up a notch.

In the previous movies, having the cars do all of the heavy work when it came to the action put everyone on the same playing field, but getting everyone out their cars to do some more interesting set-pieces and stunts, Diesel doesn’t have many actors in the world who can be quite as physically imposing.

So what do you do? You make him fight the only star in Hollywood who could potentially pick him up and fling him through the nearest wall.

Clip via Movieclips

Hobbs was originally to be played by Tommy Lee Jones, which… would have been quite the thing to see.

That fight is, of course, only the tip of the exploding iceberg.

Remember when these guys and gals were just wanted by the FBI for selling stolen DVD players?

Well now they’re full Ocean’s Eleven-types, with cutting edge technology and plans to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the Brazilian drug lords, all while being chased themselves by The Rock’s DSA agent, and the only way to do all of that? Blow everything up.

The film starts with a set-piece most action movies will kill to end with, including cars jumping off trains, slowly exploding trucks, and a bridge/cliff jump to take your breath away.

It goes on from there to include a huge favela foot-chase, a rocket-launcher shoot-out, that aforementioned Vin VS Rock scrap, and a finale involving a rolling bank vault and what must be dozens – if not hundreds – of pedestrians killed all in the name of collateral damage and, y’know, a really enjoyable action sequence.

And do we mind? We do not. And why is that? Because it is so much FUN!

Fast Five is on ITV2 on Tuesday 22 May at 9pm.

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