Film Review - Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (12A)

This guy's a real asshole!

Hobbs & Shaw is the first spin-off from the Fast & Furious movies, a franchise that began in 2001 as a street-racer version of Point Break and then evolved over two decades into a series of gleefully loopy action/spy stories. Taking its cue from the most recent Fast & Furious episodes, this new adventure is all about endless over-the-top stunts and broadly comic macho banter, most of the latter coming from Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Jason Statham as the eponymous frenemies. Yes, this is at heart an old-style buddy movie - and if you've enjoyed the past few entries into the F&F canon, rest assured you'll get shed-loads of what you expect. Although it might be overload even for you.

The story - how to describe it? Luke Hobbs (LA-based cop played by Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Statham's rogue special-ops agent who's returned to the good side) are made to team up when a lethal virus threatens to fall into very bad hands in London. At the centre of the incident is Shaw's sister Hattie (The Crown's Vanessa Kirby), an MI6 agent who has fallen foul of a genetically enhanced super-soldier called Brixton Lore (yup, were going into crazy science-fiction territory with some very silly character names to boot). Brixton (played with villainous relish by Edris Elba) wants to track down said virus and set it loose, in the name of whittling down and resetting the human race along survival-of-the-fittest lines. Our trio of heroes have to outrun him long enough to neutralise the virus - that's if the two boys don't kill each other first.

There are a number of reasons why I thought this movie might be a fun, if daft ride. Johnson is a likeable presence who made last year's Rampage and Skyscraper - both of them summertime nonsense - worth watching. Statham is likewise good value (as proven most recently in The Meg), and the bolshy chemistry between the two had already been established in main F&F movies. Elba is a class act and Kirby a strong female counterpoint to all the testosterone washing about. Add to that David Leitch, an action director with the undeniably funny Deadpool 2 and the bruising Atomic Blonde already under his belt. I wasn't expecting greatness, but I did figure there'd be a genuine sense of fun.

And there is for about half an hour - slick introduction to the characters, nice bit of stuntwork down the side of a London skyscraper, everyone clearly having a blast as they trash England's capital in a variety of motor vehicles - before my old Fast fatigue set in.

I actually sat pondering why last year's Mission: Impossible - Fallout had me enthralled, while during this film I ended up staring unmoved at all the stuff going down on-screen. Both are jet-setting, action-heavy spy stories after all. The reason, I think, is a simple one. With Hobbs and Shaw, much like the franchise of which it's an off-shoot, there's zero sense of jeopardy. The stunt sequences are too frequent, too OTT-ludicrous, too CGI-enhanced, to provide any sense that the characters (or the world) could come to serious harm. There's also minimal attention to plot logic or the laws of physics - an issue which arguably counts for less in a comedy-action spectacular, but which here just further undermined any lingering reasons I had to care. What's left is a series of big set-pieces high on ballistics but low on tension, strung together by the insult-heavy banter. (Even that wears thin after a while.)

Okay - in the name of my recent Glass Half Full article let me identify a few things I liked. The film has a clear sense of style when it pauses long enough to let it sink in. The London locations look good. It's quite fun when the final act explores the Hobbs character's Samoan ancestry. An unexpected cameo during a plane-flight was genuinely funny. Vanessa Kirby kicks ass.

That's it, really. If I hadn't got suckered by the promise of big laughs and a thrilling, engaging ride, I wouldn't have felt so deflated by the end. Hobbs and Shaw only serves to bulk up my list of 2018 summer blockbuster disappointments. As with all things Fast and Furious it wants to be daftness as an art form. In truth it's just plain daft - to the point of tedium. Sorry, lads.

Gut Reaction: It did make me laugh a few times and there were a handful of awe-worthy action moments. After that, stupefaction.

Memorable Moment: Extreme abseiling.

Ed's Verdict: 5/10. Fast and Furious: Sound and Fury. Signified bugger all.