All wrapped up? Not a chance

After watching Fast Five, part of me wondered if they weren't finally deciding that five was enough installments of the Fast & Furious series.

The part of me that didn't realize there was a post-credit sequence, that is.

That part of me found out about the post-credit sequence only by reading a review of the movie, which teased the inevitable Fast & Furious 6, and which I then proceeded to watch on Youtube. Except it seemed somewhat evitable after the way they so tightly wrapped things up at the end of Fast Five.

Then again, since the fourth installment wasn't a huge hit -- not a huge critical hit, anyway -- I guess they couldn't have known that they'd keep pushing this series, even past the point where one of the two lead actors died. Fast Eight is still a go, right?

What I'm speaking of is this movie's ridiculously happy ending. Like, the happiest of all happy endings. Typically, even when the good guys triumph in a movie like this -- which they sort of have to -- they don't each get to keep the $11 million they were trying to secure in the heist. Here they do, and they all get to survive (well, except for one guy who was basically there just to get bumped off), and they also all get paired off with members of the opposite sex -- except of course for the two Spanish speaking guys, who came as a pair in the first place, and the two black guys, whose status as rivals and frenemies is this close to being played as romantic.

Of course, the post-credits sequence tells us "Yeah, they're happy now -- but it ain't going to last." And also answers my question in last month's post about the inevitable return of Michelle Rodriguez.

If it sounds as though I'm wantonly hurling spoilers at you, I guess that's because I am. See, the assumption of me marathoning Fast/Furious movies in 2015 is that I'm catching up with where you all already are. My goal is to watch the two remaining installments in the two calendar months before the end of this year, so as to rank the new one with my 2015 films, and lo and behold, I'm right on track for that. Even if I had to jam in my viewing of Fast Five before leaving for New Zealand, because I'd already exhausted my two library renewals and felt absurd having to return the movie and borrow it again -- especially since I'd reserved it the first time.

Anyway, because I'm departing for the airport in just a little more than six hours, and because I don't really have time to be writing anything right now (but am conscious of not having updated this blog in five days, with another expected five-day drought after this one), I won't spend a lot of time combing through the finer details of this movie. I will say, though, that it deserves to have its finer details combed more than any so far in the series, so my quick blog treatment will be one I sort of regret.

Yes, I'm subscribing to what seems to be the general and unlikely consensus that the fifth movie in this series is the best one -- so far, anyway. What other series can you say that, and not just be trolling someone?

However, that's still only a three-star rating for me. A strong three stars, but it doesn't quite notch up to 3.5. I'll mention a couple things that bothered me or made me laugh:

1) I love how after they send that prison bus into a roll at the beginning as a means of breaking out Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), not only is no one killed -- as a news report makes sure to point out -- but Dom is the only one that escapes. It's one of the great pains this series goes to to show you that none of the criminal behavior of Dom et al has any effect on anyone innocent, even those who are not really innocent like guys serving life prison sentences. A plan that probably should have killed most of them, including Dom (who appears not to have been in on it), instead comes off swimmingly. Allowing a handful of other impossible plans to come off during this movie.

2) In fact, Dom and his friends are so inherently just in their criminal activities that they win over even people like a straight-laced DEA agent (Dwayne Johnson) and supposedly the only cop in Rio who can't be bought (Elsa Pataky). So much for law enforcement ethics in this series, as Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) was long ago permanently corrupted to Dom's team.

Still, this movie does have excellent set pieces, I'll give it that. And I for one don't mind the switch to a more Ocean's Eleven style approach to making a movie like this, as I never cared all that much for seeing guys race each other for pinks.

There can be only one

Not only one Fast & Furious. Apparently, there can be at least five Fast & Furiouses. (Fast & Furii?)

No, I'm talking about the epic grudge match between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in Fast Five, which comes out today. The grudge match I imagine in my mind, anyway.

I have long considered Diesel and Johnson to serve more or less the same capacity in the movie biz. They are both biracial, they are both action stars, they are both usually bald, and they are both ripped.

Except the demographic they represent and cater to is where the comparison ends. Johnson also does comedy and generally makes smart choices. Diesel takes himself too seriously and generally makes dumb choices.

Essentially, the erstwhile The Rock is having the career Diesel should have had.

No sooner did Vin Diesel become famous than we started hearing about all the roles he didn't want to do. The main reason Diesel has only been in the first and most recent two installments of the Fast/Furious movies (and skipped out on the sequel to XXX) is that he thought he was going to do more "serious" and "worthwhile" projects (such as, um, The Chronicles of Riddick). I'm not saying a measure of an actor's career intelligence is how many half-baked sequels he makes. The problem with Diesel -- at least this is the impression I got from an interview I read -- is that he looked down his nose on the projects that made him famous, suffering from an instant case of "I'm better than that" syndrome. There's a healthy balance between challenging yourself and understanding where your bread is buttered, and the main reason Diesel basically disappeared for five to seven years is that he was so spectacularly untalented at finding that balance. (However, one can see how some early casting luck would have tempted him into making better movies -- before the clock even struck 2000, Diesel had appeared in both Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant.)

Filling the Diesel void was Dwayne Johnson, known previously to wrestling fans (and most of the rest of us) as The Rock. It was almost like there was an actual baton passing. The year 2002 was when both XXX came out, marking the last time Diesel wanted to be associated with such mindless action drivel, and The Scorpion King came out, marking the beginning of Johnson's rapid ascension toward the A list. (Or at least the B+ list.) Johnson could have easily gone from one role to the next to the next that required only his physique, but he smartly started to mix humor into his roles, such as The Rundown and Get Smart. Okay, I haven't seen The Rundown and I hated Get Smart. So maybe I'm really thinking of his appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he showed such a fitness for comedy. Meanwhile, having struck out with A Man Apart and Chronicles of Riddick, Diesel tried to make a course correction of sorts into comedy with the children's movie The Pacifier. It was a disaster, precisely because Diesel isn't funny.

Johnson smartly followed in Ice Cube's footsteps toward more family-friend fare, starring in The Game Plan, Race to Witch Mountain, Planet 51 and Tooth Fairy. He may have overdone it, in fact, because when he appeared in a straightforward action movie last fall -- Faster -- it caught a lot of us by surprise. You may have had a different take, but to me, it seemed that Johnson had become too good for marginal vigilante schlock like this. (I understand some people liked it. I haven't seen it.)

Meanwhile, after a second sci-fi misfire (Babylon A.D.), Diesel has been racing back to his roots like a cheating husband desperate for forgiveness. Not only has he jumped back into the Fast/Furious movies with both feet, I understand he's also filming the third XXX, subtitled The Return of Xander Cage. Funny, speaking of Ice Cube, Cube was actually Diesel's successor in XXX: State of the Nation. So if Cube was following in Diesel's footsepts, and Johnson was following in Cube's footsteps, but Diesel is generally seen as a failure, how is Johnson possibly the most successful of the three of them? I'm confused.

I do think there is something intentionally cheeky about pitting Johnson and Diesel against each other in Fast Five. It's like the famous first tete-a-tete on film between Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann's Heat, only on a much smaller and more poorly acted scale. And from what the trailers tell me, they're definitely on opposite sides of the law. So I can see the same kind of semi-civilized sit-down conversation, pregnant with veiled threats, transpiring between these two cinematic luminaries as well. Perhaps it would go something like this:

Johnson: You're going down, Diesel.
Diesel: I've been down. What else ya got?
Johnson: Oh you think you're a real comedian.
Diesel: No, isn't that your job, Mr. Saturday Night?
Johnson: It was one time! I only hosted once!
Diesel: Yeah, you were pretty menacing in your hula skirt. Me, I invented menacing.
Johnson: Menacing like Find Me Guilty? When you wore a bad wig and played a goofball mobster defending himself?
Diesel: Shut up. The great Sidney Lumet directed that film, may he rest in peace.
Johnson: And the great Richard Kelly directed Southland Tales.
Diesel: Um, yeah.
Johnson: Shut up.
Diesel: Face it -- you wish you were me.
Johnson: I am you -- only better. I've had two full careers. So, I've had one-and-a-half more careers than you.
Diesel: But were you ever in a movie nominated for best picture? Hello, I was one of those dudes saving private Ryan.
Johnson: Wasn't Be Cool nominated for best picture?
Diesel: No.
Johnson: Wait, how are you winning this argument? I'm much more successful than you are by any standard. Plus, I actually know how to fight.
Diesel: Please. Professional wrestling is fa--
Johnson: DON'T. YOU. DARE.
Diesel: Alright, listen dude, can we just agree to disagree? I'm always going to have that cool, laid-back thing you have to work so hard at. Which means I'm never going to lose an argument.
Johnson: Okay, but you gotta give me that The Pacifier sucked, and you only did it because you panicked and you didn't know what you were doing.
Diesel: I never panic.
Johnson: (silence)
Diesel: But yeah, The Pacifier sucked.