Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

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)

The two greatest guilty-pleasure icons of today comparing the size of various body parts in a wisecrack-packed action flick from the director of John Wick and Deadpool and… it’s not fun? Before the screening, I obediently performed the process of brain paralysis, which let me have a lot of fun with some of the action scenes (the helicopter one at the end is awesome, really), but the rest runs somehow on fumes. Save for a couple of exceptions, the humour is very forced and it’s soon clear that these two brutes are better together in secondary roles, where they can sneer at each other for ten minutes and then give way to some proper jokes. The story, on the other hand, it’s low-brow junk salvaged from a couple of decades ago that goes by fast and brings some welcome diversity with Vanessa Kirby, but after so many Fast and Furious, the viewer has lost their naivete and won’t be very impressed by a black superman unable to destroy a semi-nude rugby team with a javelin. I looked forward to it, but the market saturation with similar nonsense and the lack of creativity frustrated my experience. (09/14/2019)

Hollywood finally reached the level of Hong Kong, though only in the category of action comedies with a freely episodic screenplay. So, there will be variety-show cameos and a screenplay created through brainstorming and jumping across genres without structure. Except it is a shame that instead of real action attractions, we only have video game-style CGI mirages. The question remains as to whether the filmmakers should be cursed for engaging in futility according to western norms, or if we should praise them for creating a perfect product for the Chinese market, where precisely this sort of thing has the greatest success. Nevertheless, it is commendable that the producers finally cut out the weakest and most laughable part of the whole franchise, i.e. Vin Diesel, though the blather about family remained, only this time it is interspersed with more sequences of boring dick-measuring contests that do not have the slightest spark of real homoerotic tension. But perhaps David Leitch made enough money with this job to be able to shoot something proper again someday. (04/30/2020)

A loud, overblown and clunky action film with a digital finale and a director who can’t handle a blockbuster. It's a wonder that the action doesn't really stomp much, because for example Atomic Blonde may have had a script that was too convoluted and made it stumble in the last stretch, but what made it stand out was the climactic action. The potential here was endless, they had a two-metre mountain of muscle and and a chiseled bloke, master of all martial arts. So, what happened with Leitch’s typical signature is a big mystery. Idris Elba was far more interesting, but his character, unfortunately, had a flat trajectory. Kirby was OK. At the beginning things still look decent, the car chase in London was very good, but things get weaker in the East, and the Samoa action definitely buries it. It will probably find its fan base, despite the lack of Vin Diesel, the franchise's main draw, and I'd much rather watch the twenty-fifth episode, where all the key characters are together. (08/04/2019)

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)