14: The Fast And The Furious 5: Rio Heist aka Oceans 14 (cinema)
I have seen every Fast And The Furious film in the current cycle in the cinema. Even Tokyo Drift. The travails of undercover cop turned bad guy Paul Walker and bad guy staying a bad guy Vin Diesel have been an entertaining pleasure of mine for the last ten years or so. (Even Tokyo Drift). Part of the pleasure is in this being a franchise centred around unreformed bad guys, they race cars, they steal stuff and whilst they don’t set out to kill people, people inevitably die (poor old Michelle Rodriguez). It has given up trying to reform them, they are now career criminals and there is something refreshing about a franchise which has accepted that bad guys can be fun to watch (cf Crank!) And somehow despite losing all of its lead characters in Tokyo Drift (that’s why no-one saw it) they are all back here in Rio plus Dwayne Johnson – who has to wear a beard lest we mistake him for Vin Diesel. For some reason these big bad car thieves and street racers want to re:make Ocean’s Eleven, just with added car stunts. Indeed they stuff the film with a gang of nine of them, plus a few extras, it truly is as stuffed as a soap opera with extraneous characters. Stuffed with car thieves who decide to rob a police station. Mainly because it is a stupid idea and thus a great idea for a stupid franchise. And if that makes no sense from a story telling point of view, wait til you see the physics of this film. Really. It is laughable.
Which is great because I like laughing. And while Fast Five (as they like to call it) is too long and has too many characters, it is actually rather fun. More fun actually than any of the others. Which is unusual for a fourths sequel, particularly after Tokyo Drift. So no spoilers on the fantastically dumb and unworkable finale, just a point that bugs me in film and tv which FF5:RH, repeats yet again. In real life, if one of my female friends bolted off to the bathroom to vomit, I would assume that she might have a hangover. Or perhaps food poisoning. THIS IS NEVER THE EXPLANATION IN FILMS. Lady vom = up duff.
Film 2Oh!! is me trying to write about every film I have seen this year,this year. I’ve seen 87 and now written about 14.