Trailer
Plot summary
Hiding in Rio de Janeiro after breaking Dominic Toretto out of a prison transport, Brian O'Conner and Mia Toretto join Vince on a job to take three cars from a train. They learn DEA agents are aboard and the vehicles are seized property. Dom arrives; the job's leader, Zizi, wants only the Ford GT40, so Mia drives it off the train herself while Dom and Brian fight Zizi's men. Brought before drug lord Hernan Reyes, the cars' owner, the pair escape to a safehouse. Accused of killing the DEA agents, the three draw a Diplomatic Security Service team led by Luke Hobbs, working with Rio officer Elena Neves. Cornered, Dom proposes robbing Reyes and assembling a crew.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fast Five (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Dwayne Johnson's DSS agent Luke Hobbs was first developed with Tommy Lee Jones in mind. After a fan on Vin Diesel's Facebook page said they wanted to see Diesel and Johnson together, Diesel and director Justin Lin redesigned the role for Johnson.
- One of the vaults built for the heist was a reinforced, four-wheeled self-drive rig dragged through the streets of San Juan on 30-foot cables by two stunt Dodge Chargers. Its driver, stuntman Henry Kingi, wore a temperature-controlled suit because the interior could exceed 100 F.
- Fast Five was meant to shoot in Rio de Janeiro, but the Puerto Rican government offered nearly $11 million in tax incentives, so Puerto Rico stood in for Rio.
- For the train heist the filmmakers deliberately used cars they could cheaply replicate, a 1972 De Tomaso Pantera, a 2007 Chevrolet Corvette GS Roadster and a Ford GT40, to avoid paying to replace a genuine $2 million Ford GT40.
- A planned finale with the vault hanging over the edge of the Teodoro Moscoso Bridge was dropped, because the production decided even the powerful Dodge Chargers could not support the vault's weight.
- The Subaru Impreza camera car's driver Allen Padelford would sometimes accidentally hit the towed vault, and the shower of sparks that resulted was kept and used as footage in the finished film.
- Tyrese Gibson, returning as Roman Pearce, was already committed to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, so he flew back and forth between Puerto Rico and Atlanta to shoot both films at the same time.
- Brazilian critics attacked the film's portrayal of Rio de Janeiro as a city of drug traffickers and corrupt police; O Globo said the producers used aerial shots and quick editing to deceive viewers into thinking the crimes happen in Rio.
