Movie Review: Fast & Furious 5

WARNING: spoiler ahead!

this week alone, i've watched Priest, Thor and Fast & Furious 5. all three weren't that great but i especially enjoyed Priest for some reasons *coughsPaulBettanycoughs*. but i'm only going to be talking about Fast 5 because it's the only movie of which i've really absorbed the content. watching Priest i couldn't take my eyes of Paul Bettany and throughout Thor, i was too busy figuring out whether the girl was really Natalie Portman or not to actually concentrate on the movie.

so yeps, back to Fast & Furious.

to be honest, i never liked shows that focus on cars and sweaty men. some movies generate "male narcissism" sentiments and Fast and Furious definitely falls in that area. fortunately, the stereotypical aspect of the movie is balanced out by the portrayal of actual intelligent female characters in this very "masculine" movie. one would know that women do not only serve as "trophies" for car racing or some random chick the male characters pick up just because they can.

take Mia Toretto (played by Jordana Brewster) for example; she's beautiful and smart. she can bust a cap, run on dilapidated roofs, overlook routes on some high tech computer monitor all the while being pregnant. she's probably the reason why i kept watching, besides the fact that the male leads are stunningly gorgeous.

while i was squirming in my seat trying to suppress a fan-girl squeal every time Vin Diesel appears on-screen, i asked myself;

"what could possibly be better than a dangerously hot, bald guy?" 

"see? me takes no effort to look absolutely good-looking."

and then the answer came up.

"this is Brazil, baybeh!"

TWO hot bald guys.

well, yeah, i get it, he's old and eww the beard? but come on, most of us knew him through WWE and back then, The Rock was like the most popular rookie wrestler (the people's elbow, anyone? :D) because he's good looking. and up till now, he's still the most good-looking one from WWE to me so the impression's stuck. whether he's old or not.

Dom and Luke (played by Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock) were enemies at the beginning; a wanted criminal VS a police officer. so there was a lot of shooting going around; a lot of punching and kicking, basically violent scenes. what disappointed me most was that the storyline was pretty much predictable. you see, somewhere in the movie, Luke's team mates were shot down and there he was watching his friends' dead bodies and staring death in the face as Reyes' lackeys approach and then, oh look what happens, Dom and co. saved his ass.

Dom extended his arm over while Luke stared at him in complete horror. then comes the dramatic background music as Dom took Luke's hand and pulled him right back up. quoted from @nigahiga and reminded by @calyn, i smell  b-r-o-m-a-n-c-e.

think about it, what could be more adorable than a friendship between an ex-babysitter and an ex-tooth fairy?

"thou shall not speak of this moment. ever. again."

"ok, calm down. this will be easy. just do exactly what you did to stop the time-bomb in Iraq."

i've yet to watch the rest of the Fast & Furious chronicles but i think it's probably the first time they cast so many female leads? since Mia is Dom's sister, she must have made an appearance somewhere in the earlier parts but probably not so much compared this time? besides, they also threw in Elsa Pataky, who played Elena and Natalie Gal who played... Brazilian.

(wtf, i didn't know most of their names so i Wiki-ed and apparently Natalie Gal's character is named "Brazilian" is that like her name in the movie or the Wiki people have no idea too so they just randomly called her a country?).

meet Brazilian. 

aha, you men you think you so smart with making the money, safekeeping the money in the vault and POOF! comes a woman in a sexy bikini and you can't help but grab her ass only to find out later that your finger print's all over her thongs which she uses to break into your freaking vault? gentlemen, that is saying something.

also, unfortunately, it was not until the credits started rolling that i realized Ludacris is in the movie, too. i had absolutely no idea that the team geek can rap in real life. actually, i couldn't have recognized Ludacris anyway but i do hear of him from time to time over the radio and on the internet. heck, i sometimes have trouble differentiating Kanye West and P. Diddy. all of them rappers, with the exception of Eminem, look the same!

until the end of movie, the story was blatantly predictable. the guys got the job done, the cash and of course, the women. however, they caught me off guard with Vince. i thought he came back to betray Dom again but in the end he just died, which is too bad, because Dom VS Vince -that's definitely something i'd look forward to. but nope, he just died after requesting Dom to look after his baby boy, Nico (who looks absolutely nothing like the father, honestly!).

and just when i thought, "all right, goodnight bye bye", the movie decides to take a u-turn down the random road. at the end, we see Brian (sorry i didn't mention him. he's sexy but too bad, NOT bald) and Mia strolling hand-to-hand on the beach looking all so happily-ever-after and then out of the blue, Dom came up to the porch with Elena.

now where did that come from? what happened to being true to their dead/missing significant other? this reminds me of the part where Dom and Elena had this brief heart-to-heart talk about how much they missed their loved ones; the part when Dom's about to leave and Elena said something touching (i can't remember what) to which Dom replied;

"ain't got nothing on me and me cool shades."

"i thought nobody understood what i feel. but you do."

it's supposed to be a goddamned heartfelt moment but i felt nothing; where the hell's the dramatic face and the right pause? he just stood there with this frozen look on his face that says, 'yeah i'm reading this off the scripts who cares people just like to watch me drift in my cool car'. Vin Diesel was excellent in Pacifier which proves his acting versatility but the Dom-Elena moment just wasn't there. i didn't feel it. it was like a coconut-flavored popsicle. and i don't know what i'm saying.

effects-wise, i would give the movie a 4 out of 5. nothing beats reckless driving and cars flipping over like pancakes before being crushed to junk metal. story-wise; 2 out of 5 for a pretty much predictable flow throughout, except the very ending when we found out that Dom randomly hooked up with Elena and they randomly visited Brian and Mia on a very random day.

baffling, really.

on a whole, i think Fast and Furious 5 deserves a 3.5 out of 5 which is more than what i would give Thor and Priest. if you want a quick, straightforward movie, go for Priest. if your personal preference is more inclined to actually savour what's said in the dialogues, go for Thor because it has the right amount of humour and storyline to it.

if you're a girl, don't worry about which to watch; each movie has a hottie lead. the only problem is which to watch first.