Wild Speed MEGA Max. (Spoilers)

Fast Five is a transitionary film from what I’ve been told, where the series becomes less about racing and more about heisting, fist fighting, and family. A let down for people who wanted the series to stay true to its roots, but probably the best they could do without going the Tokyo Drift route and making every movie be a spinoff about different countries and their race culture. Although I’d still like to see that, it probably wouldn’t make the $600 million that Fast Five made.

I’m glad they actually showed the bus heist to connect this to Fast 4 rather than just cutting to some point in the future and having the characters reminisce about how crazy the heist was. Brian is finally embracing his life as a criminal and the man to Mia, Dom has finally accepted him into the family, and Han Lue is back again. If I understand correctly, Tokyo Drift is set between the events of Fast 6 and Fast 7, which makes the whole thing confusing. I’m also aware of the fact that Han’s death is straight up retconned as is Letty’s, who we see in a mid-credits scene at the end.

This isn’t me complaining about Michelle Rodriguez coming back to the series.

I do love Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson finally making his appearance as Luke “The Hobbs” Hobbs. The funny thing about Hobbs is that the police up to this point have been either ridiculously incompetent or corrupt, or some combination of both. Hobbs meanwhile is basically just the law-abiding opposite of Dominic and that’s precisely why Hobbs is able to find and track them down multiple times over the course of the movie. And almost capture them, and also capture them. Hobbs may be the first time this series has had a truly competent antagonist.

It also tracks that Hobbs would eventually let Dominic and crew go free, probably knowing the whole time that they had stolen the money out of the vault. Which brings me to the vault. The vault chase sequence is hilarious because the film officially goes from “how are they going to pull this off” to just shutting your brain down and enjoying the movie. Nothing about the vault chase makes even a lick of sense, which means everything is on the table and the cars are going to do whatever the hell the director says they should be capable of doing.

If I could give a little criticism on this point, I’d like to say that this is where the audience starts to disengage from the films. The characters become less human as the film gives them effectively godlike powers over reality, able to shift physics on a whim and protection so thick they might as well be wearing bulletproof vests that say “plot armor” in big letters on the chest. You kill off any tension because character deaths are visibly the result of the writer just feeling like it rather than being a natural part of the plot. And bringing characters back from the dead further kills investment in the characters in the first place.

On the other hand Vin Diesel smashes cars with a big safe. He he, pass the salted butter please.