FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS - HOBBS & SHAW: Plain, Commando-Level Dumb Fun

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy  

Produced by: Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Chris Morgan, Hiram Garcia  

Directed by: David Leitch    

Written by: Chris Morgan, Drew Pearce    

Production Company: Universal Pictures   

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Helen Mirren, Teresa Mahoney, Eiza Gonzalez   

Runtime: 136 minutes                          

SYNOPSIS: 

America’s finest operative Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Great Britain’s finest Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) must resume their unlikely alliance when Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), a cyber-genetically enhanced terrorist hot on the trail of a deadly virus, poses a new threat to the entire world and their masculinity.  The mission becomes more personal when they discover that missing MI6 agent Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), who just so happens to be Shaw’s sister, is involved. Safe to say, tracking her down and persuading her to join their plight might be important to their cause. 

REVIEW: 

How far have the Fast and the Furious come since its debut in 2001. What began as a movie about street racing has now evolved into one of the biggest franchises in the world. Despite already having an established star like Vin Diesel early in their books, it was actually another actor who made these movies the moneymaking machine it is today: Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. 

For awhile, the first four installments were only successful amongst niche audience, before Dwayne Johnson’s star power took Fast Five (2011) and its subsequent sequels into bona-fide Hollywood blockbuster level. 

It also paved the way for other big names to join the party, especially action star Jason Statham. Appearing in three movies so far (including a post-credit uncredited appearance in Fast & Furious 6 (2013)), Statham has already made as much of an impression as Johnson. A villainous turn in Furious 7 (2015) was then followed by sharing a surprisingly entertaining chemistry with Johnson in the Fate of the Furious (2017), the latter of which was so entertaining that it deserved far more screentime than the all-too-brief one they’d gotten. 

And so, it is inevitable that Universal would capitalize on the duo’s popularity for their next Fast & Furious movie. Ditching its proven ensemble cast formula for a two-hander, the studio decides to stretch out Johnson and Statham’s mismatched dynamics into feature-length with the franchise’s first ever spin-off movie Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, a move which got long-time cast members and fans alike admittedly mad. A highly publicized feud between Tyrese Gibson and Johnson ensued, with the former accusing the latter of breaking up the family for accepting the gig, which then escalated into the fans’ negative perception that this movie might be just a shameless ploy to use the brand for cash grab. 

Fast and furious in its own goofy way, Hobbs & Shaw is a pure popcorn blast of dumb fun that manages to prove its naysayers wrong. Here, logic and franchise continuity take a backseat and in its place an energetic exercise in suspension of disbelief that doesn’t mind whether anything that is happening on the screen makes sense or not. Does it really matter if the movie lacks any real narrative connective tissue with the other movies? No. Does it really matter if the movie features a quippy, likable action hero who was once known as a murderer in previous Fast & Furious iterations? Not in this movie at least. Does it really matter if the laws of gravity don’t seem to apply to these characters? Hell no. 

In other words, this spin-off knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and rarely does it every try to be anything that it isn’t. It is a big-budget live-action cartoon that is not afraid to fully embrace its own silliness, which is a welcoming change of pace, especially coming off of the tonal inconsistency of the previous Fast & Furious offering the Fate of the Furious. In fact, this two-man show feels much more like a gleeful ode to the 1980’s action blockbusters than it is a continuation to the Fast & Furious mythology, capturing the high camp of the Commando (1985)-era action, with some self-aware humor and classic superhero twist to spare. 

Though the movie still retains its old tradition of fast cars, Hobbs & Shaw is just the filmmakers’ excuse to integrate them into sheer comic book ridiculousness, to delightfully implausible result. As far as the franchise’s universe is concerned, anything goes. But at the same time, the mindless action is done with a considerable amount of craft. Directed by stuntman-turned-filmmaker David Leitch, responsible for the creation of flashy modern action classics like John Wick (2014), Atomic Blonde (2017) and Deadpool 2 (2018), style has always been the bread and butter in all of his previous work, and more of the same is at full display here. Not only is this Fast & Furious outing a triumph in the franchise’s long laundry list of impressive blockbuster set-pieces, but also practical action. It’s both a special effect and stunt extravaganza that plays to Leitch’s strengths. 

Most notably, the filmmaker’s surefooted handling of the hand-to-hand combat sequences brings to mind his stunt-driven exertions in mid-budget action fares like John Wick and Atomic Blonde. Leitch’s attention to detail lends such set-pieces with the sort of thrills and entertainment value that’s rarely found in a franchise too preoccupied with car action. In fact, the whole movie feels like a non-stop orgy of meticulously staged gunplay and fist fights in which the cars are often secondary to the equation. What it lacks in intensity due to its PG-13 confines, it more than makes up for with its slickness. 

And it doesn’t take much time for Hobbs & Shaw to settle into its John Wick/Atomic Blonde-esque rhythm. 

In its opening sequence, the titular duo is reintroduced through a couple of split-screen hand-to-hand fight scenes that not only highlight each of these stars’ action skills, being Johnson’s brute force and Statham’s icy calm precision, but also the level of creativity in regards to the variety of unconventional weapons used. Here, Hobbs and Shaw make the most of a tattoo gun and a champagne bottle respectively to take out the goons while looking like a badass doing it. 

Much of the first half is rife with such kind of close-quarter action, which has enough time to get Kirby’s character Hattie in on the act. There is a scene where she is confronted by Hobbs, which leads into a well-choreographed fight that involves the use of a motorcycle helmet, a wig and a particular martial art move pulled straight out of Black Widow’s copybook (or perhaps, most spy heroine’s copybook), perfectly highlighting Kirby’s badass, femme fatale agility. It’s the same ingredients but the new type of weapons and fighting style help distinguish itself from other scenes. Leitch’s frenetic camerawork and editing, underscored by the fast-paced rock music soundtrack, inject the scene with so much adrenaline rush. 

Also, he has proven to be as well-suited when it comes to the standard-issue Fast & Furious spectacle-driven action. What holds the movie’s excessive Michael Bay-level mayhem together in such a way that make them seem comprehensible is Leitch’s emphasis on visual coherence. He does not hesitate to linger on a shot longer than typical action movie filmmakers to allow the audience more time to savor the gravity-defying bombast, which, as a result, never feels as tiresome as Bay’s manically-edited repertoire. 

The second half of Hobbs & Shaw is, after all, the cinematic equivalent of a child smashing their action figures together, which is perhaps the type of attitude the franchise sorely needs. Known for redefining the term “jumping the shark” for the better with the Dwayne Johnson-era movies, Leitch’s Fast & Furious rendition might have just outdone its predecessors, continuously redefining the aforementioned term in ways even unimaginable by its already silly standards. 

Dwayne Johnson’s action hero antics throughout this entire movie alone is essentially his middle finger to physics, whether he’s rappelling down some fifty stories-high skyscraper and landing perfectly on top of one of the goons in his first try or grabbing a motorcycle-riding goon by the shirt and ramming him into a wall in a high speed chase nonetheless or, probably the most absurd of them all, pulling a helicopter down with his bare hands. Leitch has equally pushed the transportation-themed set-pieces to its most absolute, outrageous limits, whether it’s a motorcycle crashing into a double-decker bus (while leaving a hole in its wake) or a bunch of tow trucks dangling from a chain while attached to a helicopter. 

As far as idea and execution go, Hobbs & Shaw has taken even the franchise’s most gonzo sensibilities further than any everyday Saturday morning cartoon ever did, rendering the level of action-packed tomfoolery in the Roadrunner/Willie E. Coyote skits that clearly inspire these movies’ insane stunts gritty and realistic in comparison. Leitch’s signature flair for visceral thrills and over-stylized theatricality eventually helps maintain this movie’s credibility stunt-wise without losing the franchise’s original cartoonish appeal. 

Speaking of cartoonish, Hobbs & Shaw’s bad guy is, unlike in the past Fast & Furious movies, not a human being (yup, the series has reached that point). In Elba’s character Brixton Lore, the bad guy is instead an archetypal comic book supervillain, meaning a cybernetically enhanced terrorist who is so broadly-drawn, so sledgehammer-to-the-head obvious character-wise, but in an entertaining, wink-wink kind of way. Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce’s script achieves such feat by leaning hard into familiar genre tropes, purposely treading a well-trodden path of inspirations from other super villains to assemble its own super villain story. 

Brixton feels more like a pop culture pastiche than he is a character, with an arc that resembles slapped-together parts of references to other movies and comic book literature. There are certain plot details that are reminiscent of the Terminator movies, ranging from bare bone ideas such as a killer cyborg and an artificial intelligence company that creates and employs such kind of cyborg (with Etheon being just another variation of Skynet) to the deeply specific like a near-immaculate recreation of the T-800’s POV shot for Brixton’s POV where Leitch’s visual choices evoke those of James Cameron’s. There is also an attempt at making his back story seem personal to its heroes in a manner that mirrors Captain America and Winter Soldier dynamics. Star Wars then springs to mind when the script entertains the idea of a bad guy serving under an all-powerful, elusive badder bad guy (via a disembodied voice), much like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine’s relationship. If that’s not enough, there is even a point in the movie where, in his own words, Brixton proclaims himself to be black Superman, as if the character acknowledges the absurdity of his own arc. 

Here, Morgan and Pearce’s fanboyish treatment of Brixton seems so unpretentious, approaching its exuberantly larger-than-life big baddie with rightfully sensationalist sensibilities. 

And that lack of pretensions is also evident in Hobbs & Shaw’s sense of humor. It maximizes its 1980s mismatched couple comedic angle and big egos to its fullest, fiercest potential, further aided by a script that’s filled with action hero-style wisecracks and one-liners such as “a nice cold can of whoop-ass” or “champagne problem”, just to name a few, that’s equal-parts cheesy, funny and somehow tailor-made only for men with muscle. The testosterone-fuelled banter between Hobbs and Shaw, which culminates into them hurling “Yo Mama”-esque playground insults and macho glances at each other non-stop, make for the strongest point in the movie. 

 

Morgan and Pearce have enough room to include some self-referential jokes, taking aim at the controversial Games of Thrones (2011-2019) series finale. As always in these comedies, size jokes do matter, and there is also a double entendre gag the movie keeps coming back to involving the two that runs even until the post-credits scene (yes, they’re doing a Marvel), so make sure to say and sit through the many laugh-out loud mid-credit scenes featuring a famous celebrity cameo. In terms of celebrity cameos, they are just as star-studded as the movie’s already star-studded main cast, consisting not only one of the lead actors’ frequent collaborators, but even to a certain extent its director. Fortunately, the cameos never feel in any way distracting, as Leitch has picked just the right celebrities to strengthen as well as add new comedic flavor to the mix. 

In regards to the plot though, Hobbs & Shaw is an incoherent mess. Morgan and Pearce’s script here crams far too many ideas down its throat, without even bothering to give each of them the sufficient time to develop. 

Although this spin-off attempts to stand on its own, it cannot quite decide what it wants to be. On the one hand, it’s an old-fashioned buddy cop comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. On the other, it is still a Fast & Furious movie, with fast cars and talks about family. Not to mention that there is also the matter of a superhero movie stuck in this blender. It is a confusing mishmash of disparate ideas that could never quite come together as a cohesive whole. 

Amongst them, oddly enough, it stumbles with the familiar Fast & Furious element. There’s an entire sequence that takes place in Samoa which would justify its inclusion in the franchise’s universe, but not in the universe the rest of Hobbs & Shaw is building. In that same sequence, the writers attempt to instill some thematic depth with its familial and anti-technology message that’s dealt in a rather ham-fisted way. 

It also doesn’t help that this exact incoherent plot is the kind that’s been recycled countless times. In fact, Hobbs & Shaw’s main globetrotting spy plot has echoes of Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), albeit in a way that’s closer to ripping off than honoring. Extending beyond just a rough outline, a lot of the significant plot details in Morgan and Pearce’s script seem to take the same steps as Robert Towne in his Mission: Impossible script. As the plot unfolds, the 2019-era script continuously exposes itself to its semi-blatant similarities to the nineteen year old script, to the point where these two movies start to blend together into one on the screen. 

Like in Mission: Impossible 2, this movie’s MacGuffin also involves a deadly virus. And also, Hattie makes the sort of important character decision in relation to this virus that (mild spoiler for Mission: Impossible 2) is reminiscent of Thandie Newton’s character Nyah Nordoff-Hall’s actions. Let’s not forget that the script even introduces a cheesy romantic subplot involving an exchanging of witty spy banters and words of poetic wisdom from its own Ethan Hunt Hobbs and Hunt girl Hattie that adds nothing to the movie. Throughout the proceedings, it tries way too hard in aping everything a Mission: Impossible movie has done before, without ever carving an identity of its own. 

Same problem with the much-maligned Mission: Impossible 2, Hattie’s decision, like Nyah’s, instead reduces such a lively femme fatale to being a mere plot device. A half-baked familial connection with Deckard Shaw aside, her real function to the story is to remind other characters and the audience on the importance of its unimportant MacGuffin. In that case, she holds so much power in regards to where the narrative pendulum swings that she could have singlehandedly stopped the movie in the second act, if only plot conveniences hadn’t interfered. Without spoiling anything, she would later wield her power in a third act that allows a David v. Goliath fight between some ordinary men and super humans to become a fairer fight. There’s not that much on paper beyond that in the way of her characterization. 

Fortunately, Hobbs & Shaw manages to navigate past its narrative wobbles via the sheer charisma of its cast. Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham fully commits to every cheesy stunts and one-liners the script asks of them, in the most suitably scenery-chewing way. Separately, Johnson’s very American and Statham’s British brand of ruggedness inject the humor and cool action hero moments with much-needed burst of fun. Like every buddy cop movie, together, they make for some dynamite pairing, in a manner that renders insult comedy classy. 

Amongst the new additions, Idris Elba and Vanessa Kirby are the few who make the lasting impression. Elba is having a ball playing supervillain Brixton Lore, easily blending physical finesse with an equally scenery-chewing performance so deserving of the black Superman moniker. Picking up from where she left off in Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), Kirby is tailor-made for the role of MI6 agent Hattie Shaw, imbuing her with the same sort of British elegance, femme fatale athleticism and witty humor as her Mission: Impossible character White Widow to add not only fresh dynamic to the franchise, but also the relationship between Hobbs and Shaw. 

CONCLUSION: 

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw overcomes its all-too-familiar plot and uneven genre mishmash with another plain dumb, fun popcorn entertainment courtesy of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham’s electric chemistry, insane action spectacles and an equally insane amount of celebrity cameos. 

Score: 7.5/10