Fast Five

I have a confession to make.  Are you sitting down for this one?  Okay, good.

I don't give a flying fart about cars.

There, I said it.  I mean it, too!  Until today, I had only seen the original Fast and Furious film.  Movies two through four were simply never on my radar.  In fact, even many of the fans of the franchise admitted that if you didn't care about cars, there was very little impetus to watch the movies, especial Tokyo Drift.  That's where I stood as far as this franchise was concerned.  If even FANS of the movies were telling me to not even bother, then how the hell was I ever going to enjoy Fast Five?
Simple.  They removed the focus from the cars. 
Now don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of cars, very expensive cars, and lots of vroom vroom.  It's just that now, the cars are a means to an end, rather than the entire plot.
So now there's actual gun battles and fist fights and lots and lots of women's butts.  Apparently that was a major part of the franchise.  Women's asses are EVERYWHERE in this film, and if they can't justify throwing in a butt, they make sure to keep some cleavage or at least a flat, exposed stomach in the shot at all times.
Yeah, basically this is your standard summer action fare.  Unfortunately for me, since I have absolutely NO idea what the characters have been doing since the first film, I really couldn't get into any of the drama or back story.  This is a shame.
You see, Fast Five had one huge flaw you could drive a fleet of Porsche's through.  It kept trying to be a good movie.  The entire point of a flick like this is to entertain with vrooms and whooshes and punches and explosions.  No, no, I'm not saying it needed to be Michael Bay stupid, but Fast Five seriously puts on the brakes way too often for an action flick.  Every time you get a fight scene or a chase scene, you have to pay for it by listening to one character after another deal with some problem from their past, or talk about their feelings.  Even worse are the occasions where the filmmakers actively try to make our heroes more than two-dimensional.  No, nobody cares WHY Vin Diesel is a professional thief.  Seriously, he just is.  Nobody cares about Dwayne Johnson's stance on abortions, we just want to see him throw a punch.
Anyhow, back to the whole guns and fights thing.  Yes, you do get to watch Mr. Diesel and Mr. Johnson beat the everloving crap out of each other.  You also get lots of gun battles and a very high body count.  Hilariously, we're actually supposed to be rooting for the thieves in this movie, but by the end of the film they are responsible for roughly two hundred fatalities, most of them innocent civilians and public servants.
I did appreciate the fact that I wasn't stuck in a theater watching a film about a few people drooling over cars, and I hear that they're already working on a sequel or seven, and they plan on moving further and further away from the Fast part, leaving just the Furious.
As far as actors go, I really have no opinion whatsoever.  They were all there, they were all caricatures of real people, and most of them didn't say too many stupid lines.  It's nice to see Mr. The Rock going back to action films after his horrible wrong turn at Disney, but unfortunately he had most of the really stupid lines.
On a personal note, how the hell is it that I keep getting the idiots seated directly behind/in front of me?  Just before the previews kicked on, four girls sat directly behind my wife and I, and would not shut the hell up until the actual movie started.  Fortunately for them, I'm far happier when I'm inwardly seething than when I'm directly confronting a bunch of tards who would probably just bitch at me for daring to suggest that they were....tards.
  Hooray positivism!

So check out Fast Five if you need your action fix, but I personally recommend waiting for DVD so you can skip the far-too-many slow scenes.  Judging by fans' reactions, I'd say this is far better than The Fast and the Furious 2 or 3, but I still recommend you just go watch the original Transporter flick over this particular franchise.