When I first saw this week’s TV spots for Fast Five touting meaningless critic recommendations like “an adrenaline-pumping blast that leaves everything else in its dust!”, I thought I detected the distinct stench of our favorite professional shill Pete Hammond — that tinny aroma of mediocre generica. It turns out I was right, but I’m not here to pat myself on the back. I’m here to share with you one of the most incredible pieces of bad PR writing masquerading as a film review you could ever read. Quote whoring? You betcha. In fact, I’ll designate in bold those parts the studio has or may want to excerpt in their own marketing material. It’s great because it adheres to the same theme, you see.
Summer roars to a start with Fast Five, which features some of the most exhilarating action sequences the screen has seen in years. It’s the best one yet in Universal’s testosterone-driven franchise, a series that ignited ten years ago with The Fast and the Furious and has sped on to four sequels. Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and new addition Dwayne Johnson are all rockin’ and relocated to Rio to fight drug lords and elude the FBI, a change of direction that gives the series more energy and greater ambition.
They’re “all rockin’”? What the hell does the even mean? Are they “rockin’” like they’ve got rockin’ bods, or did they actually form some sort of band like the Partridge Family? Or are they literally rockin’ back and forth like an autistic kid when you switch up his routine, or me when I read a Pete Hammond review?
With its Australian opening this week already reaping smash numbers, expect Fast Five to run up a blockbuster worldwide box office and fuel several more sequels.
What does this industry reportage have to do with a movie review, you ask? Why nothing, except that it’s a window into Pete’s methodology. Being uniformly positive about movies he knows will do well at the box office lends credence to his bio as a “film expert.” “See? I told you it was good! The people have spoken! And I am their idiot-king!”
In service of one of the most exciting stunts in the series’ history, third time Fast director Justin Lin stages a remarkable set piece around a superfast train shuttling souped-up stolen cars under the watch of the DEA. And the owner of the cars, Brazilian drug lord Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), is also in peril of losing a key computer chip that opens a window on Rio’s entire underground drug trafficking world. When it falls into the wrong (or right) hands, the crew, the gang, FBI agent Hobbs (Johnson) and local cop Elena (Elsa Pataky) are in a race to find a bank vault containing over $100 million. Putting together a team in pure Mission Impossible fashion, the movie rises to its most complex set piece—the heist. As the plot thickens with gunfire, chases and fights…
“The film begins with gunfire, chases, and fights, and later, in an ingenious twist, the plot thickens with gunfire, chases, and fights. It’s like a gunfire chase fight stew, made with gunfire chase fight roux. Pew pew pew.”
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