Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

An Extremely entertaining, action-packed, nitro-boosted joyride. The B-movie plot interspersed with over-the top-action scenes, with a designer virus and a lone bad guy who values nothing more than good old friendship and family, is no surprise in this franchise. Diesel style. Leitch is aware of that this is essentially a B-movie, so he grabs it by the udders and milks its absurdities for all they're worth. Statham and Johnson’s well-honed one-liners are like something straight out of the '80s. The kinetic and clear-cut action pays respect to the old school, even though it’s upgraded like Idris Elba, who played a black Superman with unbelievable verve. The time flies by as we are taken to great locations and the cameos are the icing on the cake. Vanessa Kirby has style and at the end the whole thing cries out loud for a sequel. And I say yes to that. ... it melts their guts. She’s already nine years old, she’s ready to hear things like that. (07/31/2019)

Hobbs & Shaw is this year’s biggest guilty pleasure thanks to the ingenious use of parallel editing (the duality of the introductory sequence reminded me of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train), Vanessa Kirby and the quoting of Nietzsche. The film becomes doubly entertaining when you notice how it reflects the career development and media image of both protagonists: Dwayne Johnson as a Samoan warrior who immediately enchants everyone with his charisma and Jason Statham as an elegant British criminal who once did a job in Italy. In the context of changes in the action genre, Hobbs & Shaw is characterised both by a distinctive female lead and by its approximation of comic-book films featuring teams of superheroes. Idris Elba plays a villain who has high-tech toys like Iron Man and refers to himself as a black Superman, while Johnson and Statham are essentially indestructible superheroes. Of course, success is only achievable through cooperation, not individually. Thanks to the emphasis on family relationships, which the filmmakers brought to Hobbs & Shaw from previous instalments of the Fast & Furious franchise, this play on sentimentality does not come across as fake, in contrast to the bombastic action. On the contrary, beyond the exploding factories, flying cars and other mechanically and precisely managed over-the-top situations, it ensures that you are aware of understandable human emotions and values ​​with which the viewer can identify. From the perspective of the genre’s history (and the filmic representation of masculinity), it is a stimulating mix of bluntly straightforward, hypermasculine ’80s action, ’90s self-ironic postmodernism and a family-oriented comic-book blockbuster. 80% (08/05/2019)

Is it just me that feels like A-list popcorn cinema is getting more and more dimwitted? Kudos to the exceptions, like Christopher Nolan, who have set the bar high and are not about to lower it. At the opposite pole is this horrible trainwreck, like written by five-year old boys, starting with the futile humour, zero chemistry between the main actors, ending with the five thousandth or so variation on a stolen planet-wide deadly virus (again?) and an upgraded human terminator who has wandered in from another genre – some sci-fi Asylum production. And, to top it all off, an indulgent, smiling Ryan Reynolds and with him, the stupid Kevin Hart. Nobody laughed in the whole cinema, nobody, even though the filmmakers were smashing their jokes on your face like stinking socks and screaming at you: “Laugh! This is funny!!!” Well, sorry, scriptwriting impotents, I didn’t have any fun. (08/07/2019)

The only thing this movie has in common with the F&F franchise is the main duo. It wants to resemble Mission: Impossible, but it most closely resembles G.I. Joe. It’s saved only by its similarities to Moana, but it’s a lot more stupid, which is a paradox, given that it’s intended for an adult audience. Only ten percent of the jokes are funny, the buddy chemistry is poor (the first encounter in the glass office, WTF?), and of all the action scenes, only the last one is interesting. (08/26/2019)

Are the screenwriters and director really more than 15 years old? I can't really believe that, or that the same David Leitch shot John Wick. Of course, the Fast and Furious series is also getting faster, more frantic and more and more ridiculous, but at least it's fun. Hobbs and Shaw didn't amuse me much except for in a few scenes. (09/05/2021)