Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw – Film Review
The Fast and Furious franchise is just the gift that keeps on giving. Who would have predicted what it would become from its humble beginnings in 2001? And now we have its first spin-off – Hobbs and Shaw, which is very good fun and as ridiculous as you would expect.
Although they can’t stand each other, DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and rogue mercenary Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) are made to work together to stop a technologically enhanced warrior named Brixton (Idris Elba) from getting his hands on a lethal virus which can wipe out humanity (standard stuff).
That’s it. That’s the plot. The Fast and Furious franchise isn’t really known for its complex plots but this somehow manages to sustain two hours and 15 minutes with this idea, because it fills the rest of its runtime with jokes, banter, truly unnecessary location hopping and crazy action. It delivers exactly what we’ve come to expect from these films. Leave your brain at the door and be entertained.
It was a genius idea to put these two together. They had great comedic potential in Fast and Furious 8 and have a good rapport – always roasting each other, delivering hilarious put-downs and trash-talking banter. I actually preferred these moments to the action because the sequences are so over the top and ridiculous that I tend to zone out, particularly because there are no stakes involved – you know they’ll succeed.
Johnson and Statham are funny individually so paired up they are golden. They make a great comedy duo and are a joy to watch in both the action and comedy scenes. Vanessa Kirby, playing Shaw’s sister Hattie, is just as capable of holding her own and totally kicks ass. I would say that her common accent was quite inconsistent though. Elba was the perfect choice for Brixton and a good fit for these movies. There are a couple of surprise additions to the cast which I won’t spoil. These big actors have more than cameos too and they are funny. That’s all I’ll say.
Yes, the plot is thin, there are lame moments in the script (“genocide, schmenocide”), and it’s way longer than it needs to be but you almost accept it because it’s so entertaining. You know to expect these things from the Fast films from the get-go, so you just have to embrace it and enjoy the ride. It’s a heck of a lot of fun.
Ps. Stay until the very end of the credits.