Jeremy’s Tophunder №48: Fast Five

10 min readMay 16, 2020

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my Google Drive, is the first draft of this Tophunder list. On that list, which I think was bumped up to 125 to allow for some honorable mentions that would eventually slide into the Top 100, I believe six of the spots were occupied by motion pictures (not movies —motion pictures) from the Fast & Furious franchise. In some sense, I cheated on my list, just a little bit. If I’m being 100 percent honest with myself (and with you, my loyal readers), there are a number of Fast & Furious motion pictures (again, yes, I’m going to refer to them with as much prententiousness as humanly possible) that I have stronger feelings for than a number of movies that ultimately made the cut.

But is there a tangible difference in the way that I would break down Fast Five vs. Fast & Furious vs. The Fast and The Furious vs. Furious 7? Not really. You’d just be reading the same gushing nonsense over and over again.

So I made a choice. In the interest of variety, I decided that in order for there to be multiples from the franchise, there needed to be a clear and obvious reason to include them over movies that ended up occupying, say, the 80–100 spots on the list. And not just “I think I like this better than that,” but something that I could write about and convey that would not only be (a) more interesting than what I’d write about the movie it would beat out, but also (b) substantially different than what I would write about in the recaps of the other Fast & Furious motion pictures that were included. In the end, I came to the conclusion that there just wouldn’t be enough worth mentioning. As such, Fast Five is the only motion picture from the Fast & Furious franchise to be included on this highly prestigious list.

I know what you’re thinking — do I feel guilty about it? Yes. Yes I do. At certain points during the process, I considered quitting altogether because I was so torn up inside about not honoring the true spirit of the list. But I put my head down, powered through, and I persevered, because I made a commitment. And because even if nobody else will, I’ll ride with you, Toretto.

The motion picture opens with Vin Diesel (portraying himself portraying Dominic Toretto) being sentenced to 25 years in prison following the events of Fast & Furious (the 4th motion picture in the franchise, not to be confused with The Fast & The Furious, the first motion picture in the franchise). Do I remember what happened in Fast & Furious that landed him in prison? Of course not. I’ve seen the motion picture 10 or 12 times and I’m still not sure exactly what happens. So, 25 years in prison seems like a long time. Obviously too long for a two-hour motion picture. So how do the filmmakers get around this troublesome plot point? Obviously, they have Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster bust him out by crashing the bus transporting Dom to prison. This is, quite literally, the first minute of the motion picture.

Wait, hold on — Dom is dead now, right? There isn’t anything here that suggests to me that anybody would be wearing a seatbelt, if there even are seatbelts on the bus. And even if they’re all wearing seatbelts, that bus flipped over at least 8 times. Dom is dead.

Oh, wait, nope, there were no fatalities, and Dom escaped uninjured.

Everyone heads to Rio, where they get involved in a train heist. You know, like you do. But the plan goes awry when Dom decides that he doesn’t trust the other guys involved in the heist, and because those guys -really- want the GT40, he’s going to have Jordana Brewster (I still don’t know her character’s name) take it instead. Why? I don’t know. Nobody does. They never explain it. Why does Dom care what the other bad guys want with the GT40? Aren’t they all just stealing cars from a train and getting paid for it? Does Dom acquire spidey-senses since the last installment? So, naturally, a brawl ensues, the driveable rig they’re using to help steal the cars ends up crashing into the train, so Dom gets the last car off the train by simply gunning it through the open door, Paul Walker jumps from the moving train to the moving car, and everyone is safe. But wait, there’s a canyon! Oh, don’t worry, there’s a river at the bottom of the canyon, and we all know that regardless of the height you’re falling from, if you land in water, you’re fine.

Well, actually, no. Falling from that height into anything would result in catastrophic injuries. Landing in water wouldn’t be substantially different from landing on pavement. But you know what? There’s no time for that right now.

Our heroes aren’t out of the woods yet. The bad guys capture them, and demand to know where the GT40 is. And again, our guys had no tangible reason for stealing it beyond “hey this other guy seems to really want that car. Let’s steal the car from the guys that hired us to steal cars and see what’s up.” That’s the entire plot of the motion picture so far. Luckily, our heroes escape in a matter of minutes, because apparently all handcuffs used by criminals in Brazil are made of un-set papier-mâché.

So what’s so important about the car? It contains a chip that shows the location of Rio Mob Boss’s cash houses. Oh, cool, so that’s why the bad guy wanted that car. What are they going to do with the chip? Sell it back to Rio Mob Boss? No, that would make too much sense. They’re going to rob all of the cash, about $100 million.

Wait, what?

Again, the gang has literally no reason to be pissed off at this dude. He hired them to do a job, and they stole from him while doing that job. Then he demanded answers, even pretty explicitly saying, “I don’t care about my employees that died in all of the craziness, all I care about is the car, can I have it please?” Dom and Brian are still like, “yeah, no, sorry dude, we’re keeping that car.” WHY DO THEY CARE? I DON’T KNOW. BUT I LOVE IT.

So, here’s where the motion picture goes from Good to Great.

The Rock shows up.

This scene is the first of two instances in the motion picture where The Leader Guy explains the job they’re about to perform in a foreign country as if this topic has never come up before. More on this later. The brilliant part of his introduction? Is it the the “I want two things — the first one I’ll explain a bit to build some tension, and the second one is stay the fuck out of my way” speech? Yes, but that’s not what I’m thinking of. It was reported that Dwayne Johnson put on 30 pounds for his role in Fast Five. While I’m sure some of it was muscle, I have to assume that the majority of it was the cocoa butter slathered all over his arms. I mean, those biceps are glistening.

Okay, so Dom and the gang are planning to steal all of Rio Mob Boss’s money. We still aren’t totally sure why. But they’re going to need to bring in some help. So they call in all the supporting characters from the first four motion pictures to round out the squad. Tyrese Gibson comes back (he was -very- available), Ludacris comes back, Gal Gadot comes back (because she wasn’t a household name yet), the guy from Tokyo Drift comes back, despite dying(?) at the end of Tokyo Drift. Then there are those other two guys who are apparently named Leo and Santos who don’t really do much but are just kind of always around.

The scene really gets good around the 4:25 mark in that clip, after the new guys all arrive, start to bicker a little bit, Dom strolls in with Brian and Jordana Brewster (again, I still don’t know her name) to make introductions, and then Tokyo Drift guy says, “so, what’s this all about, Dom?” and Ludacris says, “yeah, why’d you drag us halfway around the world?”

WAIT, DID YOU GUYS NOT ASK BEFORE FLYING TO BRAZIL?

Is there some sort of unwritten code among career criminals that I’m just ignorant of? If you get a call saying, “Hi, it’s Vin Diesel, come to Brazil,” do you just pack a bag and leave, no questions asked? I feel like I would have at least one or two follow-up questions, including “what are we doing there?” and “how many pairs of socks sounds do you think I should pack?” I mean, even if one of my close friends calls me and says “come on over to my house,” I would still ask them what they have in mind activity-wise. Otherwise, how do I know what kind of shoes to wear, you know?

Perhaps my favorite scene in the motion picture is when The Rock finally tracks down the gang at a gathering of street racers, and the Dom and The Rock finally size each other up. There’s a still photo from that scene up at the top of the post, but the full scene is worth checking out. It’s rather tense, as Dom and The Rock go eye-to-eye, but to me, it’s always just plain hysterical. You see, Vin Diesel can be (very) generously listed as 5–11. Meanwhile, Dwayne Johnson is 6–5. So either Diesel is spending the entire scene standing on a box (or on 6-inch lifts), or they dug a trench for Johnson to stand in. I can’t watch the scene and not think about it.

The franchise is built on one premise — that the characters live their life a quarter-mile at a time. That’s how long the street races are. One quarter of one mile. For these people, winning quarter-mile street races is the greatest possible measure of a human being. But here’s the thing — there’s really no skill involved in a quarter-mile drag race whatsoever. I could race a quarter-mile against the most accomplished drag race drivers in the world, and if my car has 10 more horsepower than theirs does, I’m winning the race 90 percent of the time. If two drivers are racing identical cars, the race will be won by whichever driver ate a smaller lunch. And yet, for these people, a quarter-mile race is some kind of religious event.

The pinnacle of the motion picture comes in the final half-hour. The Rock and his team of agents capture Dom and the gang, but then Rio Mob Boss’s henchmen ambush the group. The Rock’s team of agents ends up dead, and finally Dom and The Rock team up to steal Rio Mob Boss’s money. Are they going to break into the police station, crack open the vault, and abscond away with the money? No. That’s far too tame.

They’re going to steal the vault.

Yes, you heard that correctly.

Fast Five is really a wonderful motion picture that I love for its simplicity, restraint, and subtlety. Set in Rio, you’d think it would be packed to the brim with helicopter shots panning over the Christ the Redeemer statue. But the filmmakers respected the artistic process, and decided to only include 328 of those shots. The dialogue is rich and meaningful. The characters feel like real people. The plot feels natural. The effect sequences are realistic.

Wait, nope, none of that is true.

Fast Five is a trash movie. But that’s why I love it. It has always been my favorite Fast & Furious movie, because it’s when everybody started to lean into the idea that they could make these movies bad on purpose, and everyone would still like them. To me, Fast Five was really the turning point of the series, the moment when even the people making the movie were in on the joke (for the most part). Adding Dwayne Johnson was a great idea — he just makes the movies feel bigger, more of a spectacle. And that’s what the series has become — a constant effort to one-up the most ridiculous thing from the previous movie, and for the most part, they’ve been able to do that. They added Jason Staitham, and then spun off Staitham and Johnson’s characters into their own movie. Now, with F9 coming next year, they’re adding John Cena. These are movies that know exactly what they are and exactly what they’re not, and that’s something I always appreciate. They’re ridiculous and terrible, but they know that they’re ridiculous and terrible. And that’s why Fast Five is my 48th-favorite movie of all time.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

9. Saving Private Ryan

11. The Big Short

13. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

15. Skyfall

17. Ocean’s 11