Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

A spin-off that could have taken a step aside and "grounded" the franchise from overblown CGI escapades that squander the undeniable testosterone potential, into less overblown macho action with a top-notch central duo that has a workable "dude bro" chemistry between them. It could have been a blockbuster in the style of Tango & Cash. The result, however, is a behemoth with cyborgs, Transformers bikes, programmable viruses, even more overblown scenes with a green screen behind Rock and Statham, Spectre/Hydra and an overblown running time. This is G.I. Joe III more than anything. And on top of that, the central duo, whom the filmmakers let squirm in one "I've got bigger balls than you" position for the entire film, they are (childishly) funny at first, but they squander it over the course of more than two hours. Still, it has a few solid moments, a few glimpses of guilty pleasure scenes and especially in the first half it moves along, before things get good for an hour in Russia and Samoa. (05/08/2019)

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. (14/09/2019)

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. (05/09/2021)

I got what I expected. Hobbs and Shaw is a spectacular action film in which reality has nothing to do, and the closer it gets to its end, the more elaborate, insane and bigger it gets. And given that the power plant here blows up somewhere around the 70th minute, you probably have an idea of what it looks like at the end. David Leitch has approached this Fast and Furious spin-off as a modern adrenaline-packed Bond film, but unlike, say, xXx, it works brilliantly. Jason Statham and The Rock are great in both the action scenes and the moments when they're bantering. Idris Elba also nails the bad guy, and Vanessa Kirby is not only sexy, but she manages to keep up with the heroes in the action scenes as well. The only thing that bothered me is that Hobbs and Shaw didn't take the opportunity to be significantly different than the franchise it came from. I was hoping that they the film would push the envelope a lot more, and that the kind of futile attempt to look serious and earnest that we've been seeing from Vin Diesel for a few years now would disappear. Hobbs and Shaw have the chops to put their own face on it and step in a slightly different direction. But they were a little afraid to do it the first time, and when they did, they were a little clumsy. On the other hand, that's also why I hope they get at least one more chance. (31/07/2019)

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. (01/05/2020)