The next installment in the Fast and the Furious franchise “Furious 7” hits theaters this weekend. I figured now would be a great time to make my pitch, in writing, for the movie the sucked me into the whirlwind. That’s right. The fifth movie.

Now I saw The Fast and The Furious, and 2 Fast 2 Furious, probably on rental from a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, but they weren’t a staple in my collection. Fun cars, they go really fast, and always sent me home to play some sort of Need for Speed game whenever I got home. That was really it.

Now enter Fast Five, and Sven (site contributor) asking me to tag along. Now I had missed the third and fourth installments, and I heard that I wasn’t missing much. So I, probably like many of you, was weary of this fifth installment. But it turned into one of the very few areas where he and I agree completely.

Thankfully for Fast Five they reinvented what they wanted the franchise to be about. The cars took a backseat (pun somewhat intended) and we see more of a movie that looks like Oceans 11 meets Italian Job. They take characters from previous Fast and/or Furious movies and bring them all together for “one last job”. However the car heist (from a speeding train) goes awry and sends the movie in a new direction.

From here it turns into more of a heist movie, and not of cars. In fact, in the place where an epic street race were to go down. We see the smack talk of Paul Walker and Vin Diesel’s characters to the local street racers and then all of a sudden the next scene has them back at home saying ‘we won’ with the cars in tow. There are some racing elements in it, but the focus isn’t necessarily those racing elements alone. In fact, it has one of the most enjoyable car chases that I’ve seen in it. And just a true car chase.

And then we have Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. As the government agent chasing Walker and Diesel as they have fled the country. (They do a sufficient job of catching you up at the start of the movie so you get enough details without having to go back and rewatch 1-4. In fact, after my initial viewing of Fast Five, I went out and RedBoxed Fast and Furious [the exact title of the 4th one] and it was quite disappointing). The Rock brings another action star presence to the screen to this rag tag group of characters. And of course this leads to a big fight between himself and Diesel. (Minor spoiler alert but with these two, everyone saw it coming)

Fast Five really was a game changer for me, Fast & Furious 6 met the same expectations, and I’m looking forward to see what Furious 7 brings to the table. It’s a different feel entirely if you gave up on the franchise (as I did) or did not get involved at all. Don’t be so quick to judge the fifth, sixth, seventh movie, because if they were that bad, they’d probably be going straight to VOD. There’s even rumors that Helen Mirren wants to be the villian in the potential 8th installment, so who knows where this could go.

A solid 4/5 stars. Your move.

Pick up your copy here.