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Fast Five: The car is the star
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Movie
Fast Five
Since Brian and Mia Toretto broke Dom out of custody, they've blown across many borders to elude authorities. Now backed into a corner in Rio de Janeiro, they must pull one last job in order to gain their freedom. They know their only shot of getting out for good means confronting the corrupt businessman who wants them dead. But he's not the only one on their tail. When hard-nosed federal agent Luke Hobbs is assigned to track down Dom and Brian, he and his strike team launch an all-out assault. But, Hobbs learns he can't separate the good guys from the bad. Now, he must rely on his instincts to corner his prey -- before someone else runs them down first.
By John Anderson
Newsday
The cars — the Dodge Chargers, the ’Vettes, the Detomaso Panteras — are introduced like starlets in “Fast Five,” the fourth sequel to the high-energy, high-earning “The Fast and the Furious,” and that’s only right: They’re better actors than most of the humans in what has apparently become a heist-movie series rather than the street-racing franchise that previously rolled off the Universal Picture assembly line.
Auto freaks will be in heaven: The racing/chase scenes will increase your pulse rate; director Justin Lin (who now has directed three of the five “FF” movies) stages several speed-centric sequences that justify the film’s additional release in IMAX
theaters (250 or so). The plot is assembly-line stuff, and the acting is, more or less, akin to that special undercoating you didn’t want, or the deluxe floor mats you didn’t need.
If you’re an actor who hasn’t been killed off in a previous “Fast and Furious” chapter, you’re probably back for this one: Ex-cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and pregnant girlfriend Mia (Jordana Brewster) are on the lam for having set Mia’s brother, Dominic (Vin Diesel) free from the law. When the three of them are framed for the murders of drug agents during the theft of several very impressive automobiles from a moving train (one of the film’s better bits) they decide to rip off the Rio de Janeiro drug lord (Joachim de Almeida) who’s really guilty, and assemble a crack team (Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal
Gadot) to help them do it.
Meanwhile, a Buick-sized fed named Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is on their rear bumper, and Hobbs always gets his man. Or woman. Or car. Or bank vault being towed through Rio by Dominic and Brian, crushing everything in its path.
Johnson and Ludacris are very funny; Brewster looks like she needs a meal, and Diesel seems to be prepping for the next Hulk movie. But the cars are very cool.