Justin Lin's fifth Fast & Furious film swapped street racing for a heist, dragged a vault through San Juan behind Dodge Chargers and grossed $626.1 million worldwide.
Fast Five is a 2011 heist film directed by Justin Lin. The crew uses Dodge Chargers and a vault in its climactic stunt, and the film was shot largely in Puerto Rico and Atlanta. It grossed $626.1 million worldwide.
Fast Five is a 2011 heist film from director Justin Lin, and it turned the series away from street racing towards a crew of thieves who use cars as tools. Its climax, a vault dragged through the streets of San Juan behind Dodge Chargers, became one of the franchise's signature set pieces. The film grossed $626.1 million worldwide.
What is Fast Five about?
Dom, Brian and Dom's sister Mia plan a heist to steal $100 million from the corrupt businessman Hernan Reyes, while being pursued for arrest by Luke Hobbs of the Diplomatic Security Service.
After Dom is taken to Lompoc Prison by bus, Mia and Brian lead an assault on the bus and free him. The trio escape to Rio de Janeiro, where the crew takes a job to steal three cars from a train. Brian and Mia learn that the cars are seized property, and the train is guarded by agents from the DEA.
When Dom arrives with his accomplices, he discovers that their leader Zizi is only interested in the Ford GT40. Dom has Mia take the car herself, and then he and Brian fight Zizi and his henchmen. Dom and Brian are captured and brought to Reyes, the owner of the cars and Zizi's boss, but they escape to their safehouse.
Dom, Brian and Mia are framed for the murders of the agents, and Hobbs arrives in Rio with a team to arrest them. The crew discovers that a computer chip hidden in the car contains financial details of Reyes's criminal empire, including the location of the $100 million in cash. Mia then announces that she is pregnant with Brian's child, and Dom agrees that the group should stay together and steal Reyes's money.
Four weeks of planning, a vault towed by Dodge Chargers and a series that chose the heist over the street.
Why did the series change direction?
Universal Pictures deliberately departed from the street racing theme of the earlier films and set out to transform the franchise into a heist action series involving cars. The studio hoped to attract wider audiences who might otherwise be put off by a heavy emphasis on car culture, and Fast Five is now treated as the transitional film in the series.
Universal chairman Adam Fogelson explained the thinking in April 2011. He argued that racing had put a ceiling on the number of people willing to see the films, and that making driving only one aspect of the story could widen the audience. The plan was to turn the series into a true action franchise in the spirit of the heist films of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Italian Job (1969) and The French Connection (1971).
The film accordingly features only one car race, and it gives more space to brawls, gunfights and the central heist. The production also had a broad marketing campaign, which ran through social media, virtual games, cinema chains, car makers and NASCAR races.
How was the vault heist staged?
The climactic heist needed four weeks of planning, and each scene and camera angle was settled beforehand. The crew steal the vault from a police station, and then the Dodge Chargers drag it through the city, smashing police vehicles and Reyes's cars on the way.
Stunt coordinators Spiro Razatos and Jack Gill planned the vehicle work. Their work started with trials of the prop vaults and of the Chargers that Diesel and Walker drove, and the chaotic scene in Hato Rey had to be timed precisely against the character interactions taking place alongside it.
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Preparation | Four weeks, with every scene and camera angle planned in advance |
| Vault versions | Six, each built for a specific shot |
| Tow cables | 9.1 m (30 feet) long, pulling a self-drive vault behind two Chargers |
| Vault weight | 3.6 tonnes (four short tons), driven by stunt driver Henry Kingi |
| Camera cars | A crane-mounted camera on a Porsche Cayenne and a caged Subaru Impreza |
| Vehicles destroyed | More than 200 during filming |
| Chargers used | Four 2010 Dodge Charger police cars, plus stunt Chargers with roof-mounted drive systems |
Razatos chose camera cars that could film from many heights while vehicles were moving. The Subaru's driver, Allen Padelford, would sometimes hit the vault by accident, which produced sparks that were kept in the final cut. Padelford also developed a top-mount dual-drive system for the Chargers, which let a stunt driver control the car from the roof while the actor performed inside.
Six vaults were built for different purposes. One was a facade fitted to the front of a semi-truck for close shots of the vault destroying streetcars, and another was a reinforced self-drive vehicle towed by cables. The stunt driver Henry Kingi wore a temperature-controlled suit, because conditions inside the vault could exceed 38 degrees C (100 degrees F).
Several stunts were cut. A planned scene with the vault hanging over the edge of the Teodoro Moscoso Bridge was abandoned, because even the powerful Chargers could not support the vault's weight in that position.
Who is in the cast?
Vin Diesel and Paul Walker lead the film as Dom and Brian. Diesel was reportedly paid $15 million to star in and produce the film, and Walker did many of his own stunts, training with the parkour professional Paul Darnell to improve his movement.
Dwayne Johnson plays Luke Hobbs, a DSS agent. The role was redesigned for Johnson after a fan comment on Vin Diesel's Facebook page asked to see Diesel and Johnson together.
Elsa Pataky plays Elena Neves, a Rio police officer who works with Hobbs's team. She trained for several days in tactical handling of her gun, so that her handling of weapons looked convincing. Tyrese Gibson flew between Puerto Rico and Atlanta to fit the shoot around Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Jordana Brewster plays Mia, Dom's sister and Brian's girlfriend, who is revealed to be pregnant. Ludacris plays Tej Parker, the team's tech expert, and Matt Schulze returns as Vince, who has a grudge against Brian from the first film.
How was Fast Five filmed?
Universal's production was set to begin in July 2010 and run until October, and it had a budget of $125 million. Three film units worked at the same time, and the main cast travelled to Rio so that the film would have a sense of place.
The Rio unit filmed aerial shots of the city, including Sugarloaf Mountain and the Christ the Redeemer statue. The production did not get everything it wanted in Rio, so the favela scenes were moved to Puerto Rico, which offered tax incentives totalling nearly $11 million.
Production designer Peter Wenham had four weeks to transform Puerto Rico and Atlanta into the Rio locations that had been scouted. He altered the colours of more than 30 buildings and reinforced some to carry the heavy camera equipment, and he kept the palette muted except for the favela sets.
The Teodoro Moscoso Bridge, linking San Juan to Isla Verde, was used for the final showdown between Dom and Reyes. A US Navy base pier outside San Juan stood in for the bridge in the scenes where the vault smashes cars.
A foot pursuit across favela rooftops was shot over a week in the small hillside town of Naranjito. A cable-camera rig gave a bird's-eye view of the action, and Walker and Brewster made several takes of the final jump onto a safety mat.
The Puerto Rico shoot employed 236 technicians and 13,145 extras, and it contributed $27 million to the local community. The final phase moved to Atlanta, where Wenham turned a defunct train yard into an abandoned auto plant used as the crew's headquarters.
The train heist itself was filmed in Rice, California, over three weeks, and the crew bought a length of working railroad to make it possible.
How were the cars chosen for the train heist?
Lin required the cars carried on the train to jump out at full speed, and the scene called for precise execution. To keep costs down, the filmmakers used replicas that were cheap to build, including a 1972 De Tomaso Pantera, a 2007 Chevrolet Corvette and a Ford GT40.
Replicating the cars avoided the expense of wrecking a genuine $2 million Ford GT40. Visual effects company The Moving Picture Company (MPC) completed around 240 shots for the train sequence, including a CGI train, bridge and canyon, and digital fire where the truck crashes into the bridge.
Where did the film take its money from?
Fast Five grossed $626.1 million worldwide, with $209.8 million from the United States and Canada and $416.3 million from other territories. Its worldwide opening weekend reached $109.6 million, and the film became the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2011.
In the United States the film opened on April 29, 2011, in 3,644 theaters, after $3.8 million in midnight showings. Opening day brought in $34.4 million, and the opening weekend reached $86.2 million, with IMAX showings contributing over $8 million.
The film fell 62% in its second weekend, earning $32.4 million, which was partly attributed to the reduction in IMAX screens from 244 to 20. It became the first film of 2011 to pass $200 million on June 4, 37 days after its US release.
Australia opened first, on April 20, 2011, nine days before North America. Its third weekend took $85.8 million across 58 countries, and in the United Arab Emirates it set an opening-weekend record of $1.65 million.
How did critics respond?
Reviews were broadly favourable. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 77% approval from 207 reviews, and Metacritic gave it 66 out of 100 from 41 critics. CinemaScore audiences awarded it an A.
Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, and Richard Corliss put it at number 10 on his list of the best movies of 2011. Empire ranked it at number 20 on its list of the year's films, and IGN named it the Best Action Movie of 2011.
The reviews were not uniform. Some critics found the film too long and its characters simplistic, while others praised the action scenes, and the final car chase in particular, as the most entertaining in the series.
How did the film reach home audiences?
Home formats arrived in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2011, and in the United States a month later, on October 4. Both formats carried a theatrical cut of 130 minutes and an extended cut of 132 minutes.
Blu-ray accounted for 57% of first-week disc sales, and the film was later released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on June 11, 2019. The film was also the most illegally downloaded film of 2011 on BitTorrent, with approximately 9.3 million downloads.
Frequently asked questions
Who directed Fast Five?
Justin Lin directed the film from a script by Chris Morgan, and the film is the fifth in the Fast & Furious franchise.
Why are there Dodge Chargers in the heist?
The crew steals four 2010 Dodge Charger police cars to blend in, and Chargers pull the vault through the city. Dodge also supplied several Chargers for the film and sponsored its world premiere in Rio.
Did the film use CGI for its stunts?
The film is notable for practical stunt work rather than computer-generated imagery. Digital effects were used for the train heist and for some fire and destruction shots.
How did the film do at the box office?
It grossed $626.1 million worldwide and set a US opening weekend of $86.2 million. It became the highest-grossing film in the franchise until Fast & Furious 6 surpassed it.
