5/10
The thing is, you can't really complain about this film, because anyone going to see it can hardly be under the impression that it's a romcom, a costume drama, or anything other than a movie for testosterone-fuelled petrolheads who like cars, guns, and the occasional hot chick. Taken on its own terms, it's not quite bad.
Jettison all thoughts of plot credibility, allow for the fact that it goes on far too long, ignore the implicit offensiveness of its attitude to Brazilian law enforcement, and you may find that the fifth episode of this unexpectedly long running franchise (ten years so far) passes the time tolerably.
Paul Walker and Vin Diesel (once enemies, now partners) are in Rio, since Walker helped Diesel escape on his way to prison, and they're on the run. They get involved in a complicated robbery, as a result of which 2 separate teams are out to get them: the drug baron whose money they plan to steal, and a Federal team headed by Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock. In other words, it's a cross between The Fugitive and Ocean's Eleven, though nowhere near those standards. There are all the car chases, gunfights, standoffs, fisticuffs, and implausible escapes from impossible situations that your inner 12 year could desire, which may be why the film has a completely unnecessary two hour plus running time. The whole thing could have been done and dusted in half an hour less, but by the time we've had the scene where cars get taken off a speeding train, the running and jumping through the favela scene, the let's put a crack team together scene (crack as in top, not drugs), and the occasional tender moment, we're well over an hour and a half, and we still haven't got to the robbery.
Which is a shame, because I was looking forward to a heist that was complex and sophisticated. Fat chance. Having asked us to swallow all manner of absurd stuff, the clincher is that two sports cars pull a huge safe out of its wall, and then tow it round the streets at high speed, while pursued by cops, and still able to control its movements so that it acts as a kind of bouncing lethal weapon. I don't think this acts as a plot spolier, because you probably think I'm making it up in order to fool you. Which of course, I am. Perhaps the high point of the film is when Vin Petrol and The Rock have it out with their fists, crashing and bashing each like a pair of pumped up gym bunnies, and then both of them carrying on as if no one had laid a finger on them. As I say, plausibility is not the film's strong suit. But if this is your kind of thing, then welcome to the world of snarling engines, easily-killed bad guys, women who gaze adoringly at men, and schemes that always work out.
