Fast Five

The fifth in the Fast and Furious franchise has little substance, but plenty of high-speed action – it's a guilty pleasure.

Paul Walker, left, as Brian O'Conner and Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto in Fast Five.

Fast Five

Director: Justin Lin

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson

Over the past decade, the Fast and Furious franchise has evolved into a kind of Harry Potter-style escapist fantasy series for computer game-loving adolescent males. Every car in this glorified rock-video realm is a supercharged metallic chariot, every woman a pouting supermodel, every reckless road race and gun battle miraculously safe – at least for the film's muscle-bound American heroes. These are dumb, ugly, witless bubblegum movies. But ridiculously exciting, too. The fifth chapter in the series reunites Vin Diesel's potato-headed street racer and Paul Walker's fugitive cop in Rio de Janeiro's slums, where they hatch an audacious scheme to steal $100 million (Dh367.3m) from Brazil's biggest drug lord. Roaring along at adrenaline-pumping speed and eardrum-bursting volume, the carnival of automotive carnage that follows is essentially a revved-up Ocean's Eleven heist plot punctuated by one-dimensional characters and moronic B-movie clichés. The team's final slam-bang car chase through downtown Rio, dragging a 20-tonne bank vault behind them, is just plain preposterous. But as a sheer, sense-battering, heavy-metal spectacle, Fast Five is highly effective. Future social historians may well denounce these films for the appalling truths they reveal about Hollywood's attitudes to women, money and mindless violence, but until that terrible judgement day, they remain a very guilty pleasure.