FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW (PG-13)
Released by Universal Pictures
Review by Adam Mast
If you’re going into the globe-trotting adventure movie, FAST & FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW, expecting to see Shaw (Jason Statham) brought to justice for his part in the unresolved Han (played by series fan favorite, Sung Kang) incident, you’re going to go home disappointed. If you’re going into HOBBS & SHAW to see the title characters kick ass, crash cars, blow shit up, and verbally spar with one another, then you’ll probably go home happy.
In this FAST & FURIOUS spin-off from actioneer maestro, David Leitch (ATOMIC BLONDE, DEADPOOL 2), sworn enemies Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Shaw are forced to put aside their differences and join forces with new-to-the-series Hattie (lovely Vanessa Kirby of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-FALLOUT fame) in an effort to keep a deadly virus out of the clutches of the villainous Brixton (Idris Elba), a cybernetically enhanced badass looking to help his mysterious, hiding-in-the-shadows boss achieve world domination. As these individuals cross paths, lots of stuff gets destroyed and it all culminates in a big showdown in Hobbs’s native Samoa.
With HOBBS & SHAW, what you see is pretty much what you get. The majority of the film is hinged on the banter between Johnson and Statham. Some of it is funny, a lot of it falls flat. And through it all, there are action sequences galore. That said, this film is oddly light in the thrills department and even lighter where genuine tension is concerned. There’s just no real sense of danger here and that’s supremely disappointing, particularly when taking into consideration that HOBBS & SHAW was directed by a renowned stunt coordinator who had a hand in bringing JOHN WICK to life.
Ultimately, with its silly banter and extreme ridiculousness, HOBBS & SHAW feels more like a comedy than an action film. This is to say it’s more THE OTHER GUYS than FAST & FURIOUS. Two surprise cameos in this picture, which I refuse to disclose in this review, go a long way to cement the overall comical nature of HOBBS & SHAW. Bursts of humor are more than welcome, of course, but Leitch did a better job balancing hyper-stylized action and laughs in DEADPOOL 2. Here, the comedy almost takes the film into parody territory. It’s super silly, even by FAST & FURIOUS standards.
Johnson and Statham are Johnson and Statham. They do their thing, and no doubt, they do their best to earn their obscenely large paychecks. That said, they’ve been considerably funnier and substantially more charismatic in other pictures (see Johnson in JUMANJI and Statham in SPY.) Kirby brings a much-needed spark to HOBBS & SHAW but watching her underwritten Hattie assist Johnson and Statham made me want to revisit her wonderfully shifty White Widow in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-FALLOUT. Even the gifted Elba is squandered in a role that will remind some of the 90s sci-fi action flick, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. Elba has a natural screen presence and offers charisma to spare, but there’s nothing particularly dynamic about his stock baddie in this picture.
As written by Chris Morgan, HOBBS & SHAW offers little callbacks to the enduring franchise that inspired and it also attempts to offer the prerequisite FAST & FURIOUS theme of family, but none of it works as successfully. Even a couple of brief dramatic flourishes in the amusing Samoa-set final act (it’s difficult to deny the joy that Cliff Curtis and Lori Pelenise Tuisano bring to the table as Hobbs’s estranged brother and mother) fail to elevate the proceedings.
HOBBS & SHAW is what it is. It’s certainly not a bad movie. At the very least, it benefits from a fairly brisk pace and for never taking itself seriously. That said, while I’m all for dumb fun at the movies on occasion, this one ended up being more dumb than fun.
