Disc of the Week (10/5/11)

At the beginning of the year, Fast Five was not on my list of most anticipated films. Heck, I was expecting that I would wind up skipping it just like I did the last few films of this series. Then something strange happened: people started saying it was good. I was skeptical, so I put on my cynical college student hat and sat down expecting to tear the fifth Fast, Furious, Etc. film a new one. However, by the time Fast Five got to that action sequence on the train, I was cackling in delight. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you do a dumb action movie. It isn’t a great film—and most scenes are idiotic—but is it ever a blast to watch. It’s little more than two hours of dudes being dudes, women looking pretty, and cars driving really fast. Yes, this one isn’t about street racing so much as it’s a heist film, but the direction of Justin Lin is what elevates Fast Five to new levels of awesome.

Now, if there’s one complaint I had with the movie, it’s that it was too long. At 130 minutes, it was only nine minutes shorter than The Tree of Life. Luckily, the wonderful people at Universal have solved this problem by releasing a freaking extended edition. This strikes me as rather unnecessary. That said, I dearly hope there’s a four hour version sitting around somewhere that can be released as Fast Five Redux around 30 years down the line. Because I would watch the crap out of that. If you didn’t get to check this film out in theaters, I recommend you catch up with it on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s an absolute blast. In even more awesome news, Jason Statham is rumored to be joining the cast of the sixth film in the series. Yes. A million times yes.

Other releases this week include the juggernaut that is Boy Meets World: The Complete Seventh Season, as well as the reasonably fine Scream 4 (or Scr4am, or Scrfouram), which did its job of delivering shocks and laughs about as well as I could have hoped. It doesn’t quite hold up when compared to the first two films, but for a modern scary movie this may be one of the better bets out there. That’s about all for this week, but an early notice that among next week’s releases is Terrence Malick’s aforementioned The Tree of Life. See it and pick a side: the supporters (of which I am one) or the detractors. We shall talk then.