Fast Five crashes and burns

Vroom-vroom. Boom-boom.

That’s the four-word summary of Fast Five, unbelievably the fifth instalment in a series that has less to teach the world than the Saw franchise.

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), former FBI agent, breaks his friend Dominic ‘Dom' Toretto (Vin Diesel) out of a prison transport bus on his way to some penitentiary. Some other guy named Vince (Matt Schulze) gets the two delinquents plus Dom's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) to steal three cars from a train.

This is not entirely an implausible scenario. Lots of people steal cars from trains.

What should have been an easy robbery soon turns hinkey when the monosyllabic trio discover DEA agents in charge. It turns out that the hot rods are actually hot cars, seized possessions of a corrupt businessman named Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). Reyes had some secret information about his illicit business practices in the car. While our anti-heroes just wanted a sweet ride, what they end up getting is a one-way trip to Painville courtesy of a South American gangster.

Lucky for them that diplomatic security service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) tracks them down and raids Reyes's dungeon. Dom et al., escape and set up a team to steal $100 million of the kingpin's laundered money. You just know that Hobbs is eventually going to team up with them as a way of getting back at the real bad guy.

Alliances are easily formed and quickly lost. Many guns are fired. For some reason, many people have to jump from great heights during some grand escape scenes. Undeniably, the only qualified actors in this movie are the stuntpeople. It's doubtful whether Diesel or The Rock should get any credit or whether the ‘screenwriting team' should either.

All of the scenes in Fast Five simply involve guns, girls and stunts, all in a foreign country. The only differences between this and any James Bond movie are possibly the charm of the protagonist and the attention paid to a plot that doesn't make you want to vomit.

Fast Five is just one long string of scenes that make no sense but no one questions reason or logic when there are so many distractions. The truth is that the insipid, vacuous and vapid aspects of entertainment are ultimately more accessible to the masses and consequently more popular. Go ahead and buy your tickets. While you're at it, start lining up for Cars 2, practically the prepubescent precursor to schlock like this. I'm giving early Razzies to both these ridiculously revved up screen tales. Speed racers like fast cars and stupid movies come and go in the collective consciousness so quickly that you won't even know what happened or if they even mattered.