Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Fast & Furious 5/Fast Five/Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist (2011) - Dwayne Johnson refuels the world's probably most ridiculous franchise

5/19/2015

Fast & Furious 5/Fast Five/Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist (2011) - Dwayne Johnson refuels the world's probably most ridiculous franchise

♥♥♥

1 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Practical Effects (lost to Haywire)

+ Best Car Chase of the Year (Bank vault through Rio car chase)

Jesus of Rio lurches in the background of this poster for Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 5

QUICK REVIEW:

After a 'simple' job goes wrong, our heroic racer clover wind up with a chip that belongs to Rio's most powerful man. While they get hunted by an enormous government agent (Dwayne Johnson (Faster (2010))), they gather a team and plan to rob the Brazilian gangster, Reyes.

Johnson, with his huge corpus, intense stare and sweaty arms, is the best character addition to this the 5th film in the Fast and Furious franchise.
Besides him, the film's script (by Chris Morgan (47 Ronin (2013)), based on the characters created by Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and the Furious (2001))), ruminates in seriously lame sentimental scenes of Vin Diesel (The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)) and Paul Walker (Flags of Our Fathers (2006)) talking about fatherhood, and a foolish subplot about a third 'brother', who is unpopular, then popular, and then dying...
Tyrese Gibson (Flight of the Phoenix (2004)) and Ludacris (Max Payne (2008)), however, top the idiocy in their buddy scenes, wherein the humor culminates with the explosion of a row of toilets.
Although the action scenes are outrageously improbable physically, they work for this franchise; especially the sound design and the fight between Diesel and Johnson kicks ass.
The task in making Fast Five was to give the franchise a new direction, taking it away from the relatively small world of racing and car culture and into the heist-action genre. Taiwanese director Justin Lin (Fast & Furious 6 (2013)) did this with tremendous success and is therefore set to helm countless coming, huge prestige projects: a Shaolin Temple remake, the third Star Trek film (2016) and another Bourne sequel (2016). He has also directed two episodes of the coming second season of True Detective.
Trivia: More than 200 vehicles were destroyed during the making of the 'vault through Rio' action scene.

Related post:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Vin Diesel and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson get down and dirty in Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 5

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 125 mil. $
Box office: 626.1 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Fast Five, shot mostly on location in Brazil and Puerto Rico, beat the box office performance of the four preceding movies and broke the record for biggest April opening weekend. It became the 7th highest-grossing film of 2011 overall. It made 209.8 mil. $ in North America (34 % of the total gross) after a great 86.1 mil. $ US opening weekend.]

What do you think of Fast & Furious 5?
List the films in the franchise and make your appraisals

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (15-24)

5/19/2015

Fast & Furious 5/Fast Five/Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist (2011) - Dwayne Johnson refuels the world's probably most ridiculous franchise

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Eagerly anticipating this week ... (14-24)

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