So here I am, walking to the theater to go see Hobbs & Shaw tonight. I pull out my app based ticket, start walking to my seat. When I get into theater #2, I notice my seat is…C4. How wonderfully serendipitous. Hobbs & Shaw will hit the bullseye for audiences like Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham) would hit the bullseye. But with a car. While holding a helicopter. And beating down Black Superman.
For those unfamiliar with the Fast and Furious movies, Luke Hobbs entered the movie in Fast Five, tracking Vin Diesel and Paul Walker through Brazil. Deckard Shaw initially was a nemesis in the 7th film, but eventually became a good guy by The Fate of the Furious, but a good guy that didn’t really like Hobbs. Shaw’s sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) brings them back into each other’s orbit. She gets injected with a dormant pandemic inducing virus, keeping it from Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). Brixton’s a rogue MI6 agent who now works for a shady technoterrorist organization. Hobbs and Shaw have 72 hours to extract the virus from Hattie, or risk either killing her or causing a global pandemic.
I’ll keep this review simple: Hobbs & Shaw does everything you want a Fast & Furious movie to do. There’s at least one cool car driven and 2 new chop shops full of soon to be driven expensive vehicles (clearly being teased to rival Vin Diesel’s). We do the world hopping thing: London, Moscow, and Samoa. Explosions are everywhere, including taking down a giant Russian cooling tower station…with some version of C4. The story revolves around family ties: Hobbs & Shaw’s families are broken and need to be fixed, while Brixton’s high and mighty loner doesn’t understanding the meaning of family. There’s big, badassfighters beating the crap out of each other; yes, Vanessa Kirby totally counts here, flying around like an acrobat while the Rock, Statham, and Elba dominate the ground game, unless they are running down the side of a building. And there’s big elaborate set pieces that prove F&F is a superhero movie all along: cars go under 2 trucks, Idris Elba’s Iron Man AI motorcycle stunts, Vanessa Kirby being tossed from moving vehicle to moving vehicle. You get the idea. In the F&F world, a man can literally hold together a series of 4 connected cars and a helicopter with HIS BARE HANDS. All while mocking each other for not being as macho as themselves! It’s cheesy, over the top….and very, very fun! There’s also a couple cameos that energize the movie the minute they show up, and tease fun things hopefully for the future.
I’m well aware this review doesn’t matter. Hobbs & Shaw is critic proof. It’ll explode, drive, fist fight, and hug it’s way into that lizard part of the brain that can’t believe the movie is doing what it is doing. ..and then it just drops in Helen Mirren. I look forward to the Luke Hobbs/Dom Toretto chop shop competition in Fast 9…