Fast Five Review

A souped-up, idiotic but guiltily enjoyable addition to a franchise that seems to have some gas still left in the tank.

Ear-shatteringly loud cars. Men who talk only in quips. Women who are scantily clad but 'strong' because they have guns. Dwayne Johnson combining sweat and a dreadful beard with some shameless scenery chewing. Fast Five, or Fast and Furious 5, or Who Cares it Will Make Millions Anyway, has all of these but still splutters towards the finishing line, rather than roaring into pole position (last car pun… possibly).

In some ways you have to admire Justin Lin, director of this fifth instalment in the Fast and Furious franchise. He’s kept the likes of Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster in gainful employment and produced a film that will make a pretty buck, even though it’s effectively a 120-minute trailer with a script composed of one-liners and non-sequiturs.

As Tyrese Gibson cries, "This shit just went from mission impossible to mission fuckin' insanity." It’s momentarily possible to see Fast Five – other titles are available – as an extended version of an MTV Movie Awards pastiche. For the non-initiated, holding that thought makes the entire experience nearly bearable.

Unfortunately, that dream will speed away from you faster than a bank vault towed down the middle of a highway (a genuine scene in the film). Fast Five is real, it’s ridiculous and frankly it couldn’t care less if you’d like a little more for your £10-plus-snacks than endless helicopter shots and a story that feels like a mash-up of Ocean’s Eleven and The Expendables. Only far, far worse.

Yes, there are half-hearted attempts at maturity, with an unconvincing romantic arc for Vin Diesel and a brazen deus ex-machina in the form of a pregnancy announced with what we must presume Lin thinks is moving music.

But from its threadbare 'one last job' plot, to the timeline-needling return of a character who 'died' in the third film and an implausible lack of fatalities for such an action-packed film, it’s possibly the most brainless film of the year. Until the third Transformers film surfaces, that is.

Yet for all its physics-defying stunts and a script that favours gags over exposition and logic, there’s something to be applauded about a film so unashamedly one-dimensional. If you’re not already a devotee of lives lived 'a quarter mile at a time', don’t expect to be taken along for the ride.

But like the readership of Flap – the women’s glossy to which Daisy Steiner applies for a job in Spaced – the target market for Fast Five want it big, they want it hard, and they want it now. Forget character and dramatic arcs; this feast of action excess has muscly men, scantily clad women and cars going 'vroom', and that’s all fans of the franchise will want.