Fast Five (English)

Justin Lin

Cast:

Vin Diesel,Paul Walker,Dwayne Johnson,Jordana Brewster

Rating: ***1/2

Sequels can be tricky business,particularly if you start out being The Fast & The Furious,have already been 2 Fast and 2 Furious and are now into your fifth outing.

Fast Five gets past that problem by bringing in none other than Dwayne Johnson,a.k.a The Rock,not a bad choice considering the star who has so far anchored this franchise: Vin Diesel.

The two shaved-head,bicep-popping,tough-talking adversaries start out in opposite camps,but in a series where cons have all the fun,the cars,the women and the moves,you bet at some point in the movie,they will discover a bad guy foolish enough to take them both on and who they both want to pummel.

And pummel they do. Punches get thrown at the same velocity and energy here as the cars that roar in and out of view — which are stolen from running trains,rammed into prison buses,raced on streets,run off cliffs and driven on desert tracks — which in real world should leave them tottering on rickety frames.

Who’s talking real world though here? In the F&F world,when they want hand prints to open the bad guy’s safe,they get him to caress a girl’s bikini bottom,and voila!

Fast they are,but are they furious? Four wanted guys who decide to race down a street in police cars for a bet,when the US forces with their mighty satellites and “FRS” (facial recognition system,I presume),are out there on the prowl: not quite a deed by angry young men.

It’s that what makes Fast Five little more than a speed-fest on testosterone that doesn’t step on the brake to pause for even its villains.

It’s quite an assembly of actors here,culled from previous Fast & Furious films,and Diesel remains the star. There is also a lot of talk about family,while a pregnant girl jumps off roofs to escape bullets.

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shalini.langer@expressindia.com