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Review: Fast Five

 Dumb fun, noisy neutral
By TOM MEEK  |  May 6, 2011
2.0 2.0 Stars

In the 10 years since the F&F franchise first fired up, it has regularly spun out retreads of its tired premise, pitting the righteous against the heavy with a backdrop of car boosting, drag racing, and bum cheeks hanging out of hot pants. The same applies here, though the setting rivals in exoticism the 2006 sequel Tokyo Drift as long-time rivals Dominic (Vin Diesel) and O'Connor (Paul Walker), the cop who tried to collar him, find themselves both on the other side of the law in Rio. They cook up one more job: taking down the city's flamboyant crimelord; the obstacle here is an anal FBI agent (Dwayne Johnson) who dogs them. This nonsense pulls in almost every character from every F&F chapter (Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris are back), and though the smash-bang chases make for dumb fun, it all mostly cruises in a noisy neutral. And with his film clocking in at over two hours, director Justin Lin might have raised his own speed limit.

Related: Review: The Double Hour, Review: Incendies, Review: Viva Riva!, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Movies, film, Justin Lin,  More more >
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