The latest installment of the Fast and the Furious Franchise barely delivers the fun one would expect from a mindless action movie.
Upfront, I’ll say this: Hobbs and Shaw is trash. Most going in probably knew this already, but wow what a dumpster fire. I came into this movie with ZERO expectations. The best case was a lot of fun action scenes pieced together with a shotty storyline.
A team of MI6 agents, led by a female operative (Vanessa Kirby), are on a mission to retrieve a programmable super-virus, called the “Snowflake” when they are ambushed by a terrorist organization, named Eteon. The female comes toe-to-toe with Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), a cybernetic super-soldier that kills all the agents except her. She barely escapes with the virus, but everyone believes she has gone rogue, wanting the virus for herself.
Luke Hobb (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) are both recruited to retrieve a programmable supervirus, called the “Snowflake.” When they find out they are booked to work together to recover the virus, tension rises and the two enemies have to deal with their egos to save the world. The stakes are raised when it is revealed that the female operative is, Deckard’s sister, Hattie Shaw.
The Cast
The cast was having a lot of fun in the movie. Johnson and Statham do what they do best: be themselves. They are clearly having fun, and they are joined by a cast with surprise cameos that also have fun. Helen Mirren is Shaw’s mother, who is in prison and is clearly only there because she wants to be. Joining in the surprise cameos are Ryan Reynolds, who plays CIA agent Locke, and Kevin Hart, who plays Air Marshal Dinkley. The two of them do their best to have fun with the scenes and are welcomed breaths of fresh air. Idris Elba is, as always, a joy to watch. His role as a superhuman is entertaining to watch, and he helps pose a threat that even Hobbs and Shaw can’t handle on their own. Vanessa Kirby does a great job, too. She plays well off the two and gives a fun dimension to the hot-headed duo.
The Vision
I guess I’ll start with the positives . . .
The cinematography was fun, sometimes . . .
. . . that’s it.
The writing was utter bull, and this is in the context of not expecting much from it. The lines were cringeworthy cliches at best, and terrible plays on catchphrases or wordy exposition at its worse. God, I wish the dialogue was cut in half. Even Reynolds had to do his best to make the terrible exposition and forced jokes to seem somewhat natural. The only actor’s lines that didn’t feel overly forced and somewhat believe is Hart.
The movie’s pacing varies throughout its excruciating 2 hours and 16-minute runtime. You are constantly hurled with action over and over again that you eventually become desensitized to it, leaving you alone to the brittle skeleton this movie is exploding off of. The movie has a bit of a split personality feel to it. The beginning melds the two characters and their styles together, but, then, after a crazy action sequence climax (it’s so ridiculous), the film shifts gears and has a completely different feel to it. It felt like two movies were being crammed into one, and, by the time we got to the film’s actual climax, it was exhausting and completely over-the-top (dude, I’m not joking, this is ridiculously stupid).
The Takeaway
Man, this movie was tough to watch and tough to digest. I was hoping to go to a fun, stupid movie, but it just ended up being an eh stupid movie. The number of action sequences try to top each other, and it seemed that they tried to have as many different kinds as possible to appeal to all action fans. If this was 15 years ago, this would match the quality of a straight-to-DVD movie (but obviously with a bigger box office).
Final Thought
Just don’t. Even if you like The Rock and Statham and the Fast and Furious franchise, it will be on streaming soon.
P.S. The website for this movie is standard and bland. Kind of fitting for the movie, if you think of it.
