Fast Five Review

This is where the franchise works out what it actually is. Lin abandons the racing template and rebuilds the film as an ensemble heist, which solves every problem the first four had. It gives the crew a reason to be a crew, it lets each member exist for a skill rather than a subplot, and it converts a series about young men proving something into one about professionals doing a job. Dwayne Johnson arrives as Hobbs and gives Vin Diesel the first opponent his register can play against, and the warehouse fight between them is staged with actual weight behind it.

The vault finale is the series high point, a preposterous idea executed with enough spatial clarity that you always know where the two cars and the steel box sit in relation to the street. The dialogue is functional at best and the Rio here is a postcard with favelas attached. But the pacing is confident, the set pieces escalate rather than repeat, and for once the speeches about family are earned by people who have visibly worked together. A genuinely good blockbuster.