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| Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in Hobbs & Shaw. Image courtesy Universal Pictures. |
The
beauty of Fast & Furious Presents:
Hobbs & Shaw lies in the simplicity of its existence. This film’s
reason for being resides solely in watching two of the biggest action stars in
the world action their way through a series of explosions, because watching
megastars banter and bicker is an American pastime. This is a pretty old recipe
for success, defined around three decades ago but rarely repeated well in the
ensuing decades. At the least, Hobbs
& Shaw proves the recipe can still produce a fun, albeit very silly,
movie.
Hobbs & Shaw stars Dwayne Johnson
and Jason Statham as Hobbs and Shaw, who are brought together to find a virus
currently in the possession of Shaw’s long-lost sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby).
Hot on their trail is the committed Brixton (Idris Elba), a borderline cyborg who
is part of an international cult dedicated to wiping out the weakest parts of
the human race. Hobbs and Shaw must put away the differences carried over from
two Fast and Furious movies to stop
Brixton and once again save the world from nefarious forces.
Objectively
speaking Hobbs & Shaw is not a particularly
good film. The dialogue is dopey and hammy, existing as either lazy exposition
or juvenile insults directed largely at levels of virility. The run time is
overly long, filled to the brim and beyond with extraneous scenes and jokes
that go far longer than they should. The story is bonkers and nonsense in the
way that movies about technology with no understanding of how technology works
are. It’s clear from the get-go this movie is a marketing ploy, especially in
those awkward shots that highlight brand sponsors like McLaren. Hobbs & Shaw is fortunate to be a
mediocre piece of filmmaking, just good enough to avoid the dustbin.
But,
honestly, few if any of those problems matters for Hobbs & Shaw. A lot of the fun from this movie is a result of
how gloriously dumb it is. All of the plot holes, silly dialogue, and the
abundance of hyper-masculinity that stays just on the right side of toxic
because of Hattie’s overarching competence are more selling points than flaws. Providing
a proper critique for this movie is nearly impossible, because all of the things
it does wrong are utterly immaterial to its sole purpose of watching Johnson
and Statham bicker and punch their way around the world. And, well, there are
far worse things to spend money on than watching the most charismatic action
hero alive argue with a smooth talking Brit with a list of insults 40 meters
long. Hobbs & Shaw sell Johnson
and Statham, and the movie delivers exactly that with the added bonus of Elba as
the villain and Kirby as a more than competent female protagonist.
Hobbs & Shaw is still a lot in both
run time and action, often coming close to exhaustion because the loose plot
while lacking the verve and energy of the best Furious films. Yet the insanity of it all carries it through, and director
David Leitch escalates the explosions throughout to minimize the monotony. He uses
as many excuses as possible to blow something up, because explosions are fun
and interesting and allow Hobbs and Shaw repeated excuses to demolish the laws
of physics. Leitch is also a capable action director, playing around with the
fight sequences with Johnson and Statham are brutal and the booms are much
larger than necessary.
Despite
the super-modern tech, Hobbs & Shaw
is a throwback to ’80s flicks like Lethal
Weapon and Tango & Cash,
buddy comedies where the action and the stars are more important than plot or
logic. The film is an ode to a lost genre, a reminder that bankable stars can
sell ridiculous stories based on star power alone. It’s a level of sincerity
that’s missing with action movies, which often center so much on winks to the
audience about the silliness of the expenditure the implausibility becomes a
crutch instead of an asset. For movies like Hobbs
& Shaw, the madness of impossibility is the attraction; the beauty and
brilliance lies in the spectacle of Johnson and Statham driving through an
exploding nuclear plant because it’s there to be exploded. Hobbs & Shaw isn’t art at its finest or most divine, but it’s
still worth admiring for its bravado.
Review: Three and a half
out of Five Stars
Click here to
see the trailer.
Rating: PG-13
Run time: 135 minutes
Genre: Action
tl;dr
What Worked: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby
What Fell Short: Plot, Dialogue, Logic
What To Watch As Well: Fast Five, Furious Seven
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