With 5 semi-consecutive installments to the Fast & Furious series, you’d feel that it may come off a bit winded. Having just watched it though, with that mindset, I can say that this nudges the series back to form.

Opening with the tail-end of the daring prison-bus hijacking from Fast & Furious, the initial main characters flock to Brazil as a trio of international fugitives. Vincent (Mark Shulze), from the first film, is introduced when Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) and Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) meet up with him and sign on to do a heist-job for some quick cash. This heist really opens up the movie and the premise of the plot with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) popping up at the job. The action and suspense in this scene is quite edge-of-your-seat and works as a great icebreaker in grabbing the audience’s attention.

Needless-to-say, the job didn’t go as planned and causes a rift of tension with Dom, Brian and Vince- again. Brian, however, doesn’t seem to grow much as a character as he still has this childish interest in vying for Dom’s approval. The bit now feels a little tired.

Things heat up with their fugitive status and when Special Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and a team of ‘Bounty Hunters’ is called in. Dwayne sports a goatee which, visually, gives him a bit more edge and bad-assedness. His snappy wit - with Drill Sergeant flavoring - offer a full serving of funny one-liners.

The level of violence has been notably increased as our trio is hunted by both Brazilian baddies and a no-nonsense task force. As a plan is worked up to get to the bottom of what’s going on with the heists we get introduced to the main baddie, Senor Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) and the popular plot device, “we know what you’re doing and we’re going to stop you.” Is it lazy? Maybe… seems to work though.

The full cast is Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris Bridges), Han (Sung Kang), Gisele (Gal Gadot), Leo (Tego Calderon) and Santos (Don Omar). With an ensemble cast like this and the way the movie played out, chase scenes and hoodwinkery included, you can’t help but overlay the Ocean’s 11 series. The cast works really well though and the writers did a great job of balancing the screen-times and character developments. Tyrese, Tego and Don brought good comic relief to the movie. It may have been the audience but their screen-times were well received and coupled with everything from giggles to full-on laughter.

Quite a bit of references were made, connecting previous (and future) films. It can alienate the casual viewer but it wasn’t so much so that they’d feel completely lost. It should be noted that the events in this film happen *before* FF: Tokyo Drift.

Honestly, I went to see this with a few reservations. As franchises with multiple installments seem to lose focus all-too-often, this was quite the treat. It has a few dips and flaws here and there but it’s a decent watch and a must-see for those that followed the series. Give it a shot if you haven’t yet and let me know your views in the comments if/when you do. Thanks for reading, see you soon!

Ampero

Bonus: About a minute into the credits we get a surprise scene that would make the true fan smirk with suspense and also, kinda, nudges that Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson will return for the next installment!!