“The
men we’re after are professional runners. They like speed and are guaranteed to
go down the hardest possible way, so make sure you got your thunderwear on. We
find them, we take them as a team, and we bring them back. And above all else
we don’t ever, ever let them into cars.”
So
there’s this movie, but it’s more than just a movie. See, there were all these
other movies that introduced its lovable characters and built up a sustainable
world, all leading up to this one huge movie that brought them all together,
and it’s the greatest fucking thing you’ve ever seen. And it happened in 2011,
a year before The Avengers.
Yes, F&F brought its universe together first, and they did it
better. Assembled from the disparate reaches of F&F lore, our automotive heroes unite to face not one, but two antagonists, one of whom is the Rock! Ever the scrappers, the team isn’t
equipped with helicarriers and jet thingies, but they do have an RC car camera,
some bikini bottoms, a bunch of cars, and the relentless desire to entertain.
Who is our assembled cast, and from
whence do they hail? The run down:
·
The
Fast and the Furious’ Dom, Brian, Mia, and Vince
·
2
Fast 2 Furious’ Roman and Tej
·
The
Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift’s Han
·
Fast
& Furious’ Gisele, Rico, and Tego
What’s
kind of notable is how diverse this crew is. How is that notable? Big time studios
have said that the issue is that, because of overseas markets, a white cast is
required to get the proper return on investment, logic that’s ended up being parroted
by racist internet nerds. Why would someone think parroting the words of a big
time company would make them look smart and savvy? Who knows. Anyway, Fast Five, in spite of an apparently
ruinous cast demographic, was a huge hit, basically showing what should be
obvious to anyone with a brain—don’t accept a giant company’s justifications at
face value.
Arriving
on this scene is Luke Hobbs. Now, I have an extensive list of peeves in modern
movies, and among them is the uncritical treatment, fetishization, and even
deification of the military, closely tied to the neo-conservatives. Hobbs is a
pretty damn great satire of this mindset. Starting with his perpetual sheen and
the fact that he’s played by the Rock, he’s a human action figure, spewing a
hearty blend of macho aggression and quasi-military jargon, backed by a gang of
largely anonymous dudes in fatigues with guns strapped to their chests, he’s
the ideal of Bay and Rumsfeld alike (except that he isn’t blonde haired and
blue eyed) who has stalwartly served the US of A without question in countless
movies. Yeah, Hobbs is actually an agent of the Diplomatic Security Service,
but he looks and acts like innumerable SEALs, berets, recons, Delta Forcers,
and GI Joes (wait, who was in the last one of those?).
Here
he’s the ugliest of Americans.
Hobbs
descends on a foreign land that he instantly starts bludgeoning. His mission is
misguided and false, and he goes about it in a huge, obvious APC, with little
understanding or regard for the political realities and conditions around him,
which ends up getting his team of anonymous dudes killed. Where, even behind
the wheel of an American muscle beast, the crew is all about finesse and
cleverness, Hobbs smashes or waves a gun.
The
crew, citizens of the world, aren’t much for neo-con regime change. They’re out
for themselves, and the movie doesn’t make many bones about that. Reyes’ money is
their target because he has a lot of it, and mostly because he pissed them off.
While Elena talks a bit about conditions in the favelas, the movie doesn’t
indulge in any fantasies of the crew’s interference improving, or even
particularly changing things there (indeed, Hobbs in the one who actually kills
Reyes). In the end, they are able to support Vince’s widow and child, and leave
Rio to fix its own problems, a few corrupt cops lighter and a drug fortune
lighter.
I
had to think long and hard about all that, because Fast Five short circuits my brain enough that I was tempted to just
breathlessly describe its awesomeness, Andy Dwyer-style. That bus crash should
have totally killed Dom, but it didn’t, because of course it couldn’t! Dom is
fighting the dudes in the train while Brian is fighting the dudes on the truck until the truck crashes into the train and
catches fire! So then Brian has to jump from the flaming truck wreckage to
the weird Vette Dom just jumped out of the train before the wreck hits the
bridge, then they both have to jump from the cliff before they get smashed by
the wreck! There’s a huge foot chase, and the instant it’s done, Mia finally
announces she’s pregnant! Roman’s a better Fed than Brian, and Tej is a circuit
man now! Gisele captures a handprint with her ass! Han’s still effortlessly
cool! Rico and Tego blow up a men’s room like it’s The Goonies! Hobbs crushes Dom’s Charger (of course), so Dom nearly beats him to death! There’s a
quarter-mile drag race with million dollar stakes! The crew comes to Hobbs’
rescue, using his team’s fancy guns, and Vince is the one with the weird SMG!
After winning a bunch of fast cars and test driving them to time things right
through a security camera window, the crew just says “Fuckit, let’s smash
through a wall!” They use a bank safe
like a flail! No joke, Fast Five
is one of my favorite action movies ever, an evergreen, eminently watchable
delight I’d put up there with the likes of Raiders,
Aliens, The Road Warrior, Wrath of Khan, Predator, The Raid, and Terminator 2. It’s one of those movies I
instinctively clap for.
How
awesome is this movie? I haven’t even mentioned that Reyes is played by Joaquim
de Almeida, Hollywood’s best and favorite drug lord, meaning he’s tangled with
Harrison Ford, el Mariachi, and Jack
Bauer! Awesome!
I Laughed:
Roman and Tej waste no time: “When you going to give Martin Luther King his car
back?”
“As
soon as you give Rick James his jacket back.”
Car This Not-Quite Car Guy Would
Take: My automotive philosophy is that I’d avoid a fancy
car until I could afford one that’s stupid fancy. The absurd kind. No mere
baseline Porche for 60 grand, it has to be something ridiculous. By this
standard, either Roman or Tej’s dueling Koenigsegg CCXRs fit nicely.
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