Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw Review

Once upon a time, there was a simple crime/action film set in the world of illegal street racing. This film ended up becoming a massive franchise. Now it has its first spin-off led by its popular stars, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham.

After an MI6 mission in London to obtain a virus known as Snowflake goes wrong, the commander, Hattie Shaw (Vanessa Kirby) has to go on the run, accused of being a rogue agent. The CIA wants to find her and recruit the two best trackers in the world, Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Statham) to do the task. The problem is they can’t stand each other. Even worst Hattie and the virus are both wanted by a technological terrorist group called Eteon and they send a robotically enhanced agent – Brixton Lore (Idris Elba) to retrieve them.

In 2011 the Fast & Furious franchise was revitalised with Fast Five. It was the critically the best-received film in the series at the time. There were two notable factors that helped the film – first, the series moved away from street racing and turned into a heist film. The second was the introduction of Johnson who was a scene-stealer. Furious 7 was the first film in the franchise to cross the billion-dollar mark and had Statham as the villain. The pair immediately had chemistry because of their verbal sparring and macho posturing and this aspect of the franchise quickly grew.

Hobbs & Shaw was basically a buddy-cop film. It has a chalk-and-cheese pairing who have to work together. One is a bluff, salt-of-the-Earth family man from sunny L.A., the other is a sharply dressed Londoner. One is built like a brick shithouse, the other is swifter and more agile. When they’re not fighting terrorists they are insulting each other and putting planks influenced by Bart Simpson. As Hattie tells them they need to stop their alpha male bullshit or else they are useless to her. The pair need to learn to work together if they want to survive.

Johnson and Statham have proven themselves to be comedic talents as well as bona fide action stars. Their insults towards each other were hilarious for the most part and it wouldn’t be surprising if they got to ad-lib for many of these segments. Kirby was able to keep up with the muscular men in the comedic department – one of the best moments was when the trio reacted to a scientist’s suggestion. Sadly some of the other comedy falls flat like when Ryan Reynolds makes an early appearance and a cameo from one of Johnson’s co-stars in another franchise.

One of the big themes in the Fast & Furious films is family. Vin Diesel constantly states his crew is his family. In Hobbs & Shaw, the film looked at the characters relationships with their actual families. It is hammered in early on when Hobbs’ daughter, Sam (Eliana Sua), is having to do a school project on her family tree and doesn’t have much to work on. She doesn’t know anything about her father’s family or his Samoan culture. Shaw is estranged from his sister because she believes he betrayed his MI6 team. Hobbs and Shaw is as much a film about family reconciliation as well as being a big dumb action film.

As the Fast & Furious film has progressed they have become more outlandish. The series started as a Point Break knock-off and by the sixth film, it has become an international spy series. Hobbs & Shaw is veering closer to self-parody. The villainous organisation is a shadowy outfit that wants to bring about the next step in human evolution. They are so secretive that they are considered to be a myth, their director is just a robotic voice, and has control of the media, but also have large and public looking scientific facilities in the UK and Ukraine. Idris Elba’s character is pretty much a supervillain because he has enhancements that give him super strength, resistance to bullet, and software that lets him map out routes and predict an opponent’s moves. The series is turning into a cartoon at this point.

The plots of the sixth, seventh and eighth films in the series revolved around the bad guys trying to obtain some sort of secret tech. Hobbs & Shaw return to that well once again with Eteon wanting a virus. The screenwriter’s logic is basically why write a new script when I can photocopy the old one. It is the most basic plot for a spy action film can have and the specifics of Hobbs & Shaw are a lot like Mission: Impossible II.

David Leitch has taken over the directing duties. If there is one thing that can be said about him is he knows how to shot action. His previous films were Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 and with Hobbs and Shaw he ramps up the action sequences. The film starts with a simply raid that goes wrong and ends with a load of cars forming a daisy chain to drag down a helicopter. My personal favourite was the sequence in the Ukraine which pretty much has everything – gun battles, over-the-top car chases, fistfights, and lots of explosions. For sheer testosterone fuel action, Hobbs and Shaw delivers!

Hobbs & Shaw is an exceedingly dumb film and I have a big fat smile on my face whilst watching it. This is a film that has Eddie Marsan wielding a flamethrower.