Fast Five is what it is. A lot has been made of the latest film's genre change from street racing to a heist movie, but that's not entirely right. First off, the original film was about a hijacking ring so there was always a thievery element to the films. Secondly, heist films IMO always have an element of planning and cat-and-mouse and while they toy with that element in this film, the film is so poorly written that none of the heist elements that they set up really ever pan out. There's a prolonged training sequence that is never fully explained and then completely disappears. This film, with more guns and wild shoot 'em ups, amps up the testosterone but it's still a Fast and the Furious movie at its core.

The big change in the movie is that it pulled a Die Hard - it took a film that at least pretended to be based in reality and turned it into a film based in a world where you can easily defy the laws of physics. If the first Fast and the Furious included two cars pulling a bank vault down the highway, people would have laughed and said it ruined the movie. In Fast Five, it's par for the course. The film opens with the crew breaking Dom out of a prison transport bus; their plan of attack is perhaps the dumbest jailbreak ever, includes a laughable post-event news reporter wild line of "Amazingly nobody was hurt", and away we go.

So yes, the film is silly, poorly scripted, and laughably over-the-top... but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The sappy emotional moments are mercifully short and the film over all delivers what you'd expect - high octane thrills and some crazy chase scenes. As I said in the beginning, it is what it is. If you liked the earlier Fast movies, then you'll enjoy the fifth film. If you didn't like those films or had no interest in them, don't bother. There's nothing here that will change your mind. It revels in the lunacy of the action genre; it makes no effort to transcend it.

While I'm sure that many people will bemoan the fact that the movie grossed almost 90 million dollars in its opening weekend, I can't get upset because it's a film that does stupid right. It's entertaining. It delivers what it promises. I have more of a problem with films that can't get stupid right (like GI Joe) or films that promise more but deliver even less than stupid (Salt or Terminator Salvation). Maybe it's because I'm a child of the 80's but I believe that there's a place for brain dead action films. Fast Five is a forgettable one that can't even come up with a single memorable one liner but it was an entertaining enough diversion for two hours and while I can't say that I'm exactly eagerly awaiting the sixth installment, the fact of the matter is that I will definitely go see it when it comes out.

On a related note, I would like to point out the new color coded film rank (on the right). A friend asked why I had Source Code as my #1 film of the year when I wasn't a huge fan of it. It was number 1 because it was the film I enjoyed the most so far this year but that doesn't mean that I was a fan. This is why I now have the stop light colored entries in the list. Somewhat obvious but red means stop, yellow means proceed with caution, and green means go. As you can see, there will be different shades of green, yellow, and red (since there's always some gray area in film recommendations.) And if a movie is capital very good, it'll get listed in the Best of the 10's list (also over to the right). But I also should remind readers that while I try to do my best to post recommendations of who would like a film in my blog posts, the Film Rank is 100% based on what I liked. There will be movies that I know aren't very good that make it near the top (ala last year's "Morning Glory") and critically acclaimed films that are near the bottom.