Testosterone & Adrenaline

To fully understand Hobbs & Shaw, you have to understand a movie that was released 30 years earlier called Tango & Cash. In that movie, Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell played a pair of renegade police officers in California. Each had their own unorthodox methods of fighting crime, and the two didn’t get along once they were unwillingly paired together to take down a crime lord. What follows is a bunch of action sequences and a whole lot of cheesy one-liners that might have seemed clever back in 1989, but are quite eye-rollingly stupid in 2019. I would not be at all surprised if there was a bunch of executives and other “creatives” at Universal Studios who were secretly fans of Tango & Cash, and to pay homage to it on its 30th anniversary, they used it as the template for this spin-off of the Fast & Furious franchise. Because that is exactly what this movie is. It’s Tango & Cash, with ten times the budget! Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Directed by David Leitch, who also helmed such crazy action movies as John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (yes, that is the full title), stars Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham as their Fast & Furious characters, Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw. They are forced to team up in order to save Shaw’s sister, Hattie (played to perfection by Vanessa Kirby), who has injected herself with a deadly virus in order to keep it away from Brixton Lore (the always great Idris Elba) who is a cybernetically enhanced terrorist, working for an omnipresent, evil tech firm called Eteon (because, of course!).

I must confess that I have never been, nor do I ever plan on becoming a fan of the Fast & The Furious franchise. While I can admire the beauty of a well constructed luxury vehicle, I have no love for driving, let alone cars. And I’m not a fan of movies encouraging reckless driving, which in a sad twist of fate, led to the death of one of this franchise’s main actors, Paul Walker. That being said, I am a fan of the previous works of Leith, Johnson, and Statham, and I was in the mood to just turn my brain off and let the dumb fun wash over me, so I went with my friends to see this flick. I’m also glad they paid for my ticket, as I had no cash on me, otherwise, I would have paid too much.

Since I have only seen the first two Fast & Furious movies, I had no context of who Hobbs and Shaw were, so I found it more amusing to just assume Johnson was playing The Rock character from his pro wrestling days, and Statham was playing his Frank Martin character from the Transporter movies. Like with Tango & Cash, Hobbs and Shaw loathe each other, which leads to them exchanging many insults that you would find clever if you were still in grade school. Thankfully, you’re not here for dialogue on par with that of Quentin Tarantino (Brixton literally introduces himself as “the bad guy” in his first scene), you’re here to see outrageous and unrealistic action sequences. In that department, this movie delivers in spades. Be it fist fights, car chases, or shoot-outs, this flick is a feast for the eyes. All the flick's other aspects are either totally forgettable, or eye-rollingly painful in how meta and self-aware they are.

The cast is working off charisma alone, because the script isn’t giving them much else to work with, as I mentioned with the cheesy dialogue. Johnson and Statham have great chemistry with each other, but like I said above, both are just playing caricatures of themselves, including Johnson giving several nods to his Rock persona, and Statham referencing one of his earlier movies, The Italian Job. Kirby makes for a great action heroine, and doesn’t look out of place among the men. Between her feline like facial features and her agile fighting scenes, she would make a great Catwoman for that (rebooted yet again) Batman movie that Warner Media has in the works. And Elba does what he does best with the campy material he’s given. He delivers it all in seriousness, with a hint of winking at the audience. And considering some of the villainess monologuing that he has to do, I can’t imagine another actor who could make it work quite like Elba does.

One last aspect that saves the movie are its surprise cameos by actors associated with Leith’s and Johnson’s past work. I’m not going to tell you who shows up, because that’ll ruin the fun of their unexpected appearances, but you will surely know them when you see them. Granted, they are also playing caricatures of their public personas, but it’s still entertaining to see them, if only for the shock value that they are even there!

And one last negative would be during the third act of the movie, which takes place on the island of Samoa. There’s nothing wrong with Johnson being proud of his Samoan heritage and having it on display as part of the movie (which he also had a hand in producing). However, we don’t need for someone saying the words “Samoa” or “Samoan” every 15 seconds once they get to the island. It gets way too repetitive, to the point that if you did a drinking game based on it, you would be pretty drunk by the time the credits roll. Speaking of which, there are four mid- and post-credit scenes, many of which are just last minute zingers and the actors being annoyingly self-aware about the action movie cliches that they are mocking, but going through the motions of anyway. As much as I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s examples like this that result in me quietly cursing them for making this the norm for modern blockbuster movies.

Overall, I can’t hate on this movie enough to give it only two stars, as I felt I was in on the joke the entire time, so I’ll give Hobbs & Shaw a solid three out of five stars. If you want to see a spiritual successor to the tongue firmly in cheek action movie that Tango & Cash was, this is the movie for you. However, only see it in theaters at matinee prices or if you have a gift card. Otherwise, a home theater setup will due just fine. That concludes this fan-picked review. And remember, when it comes to the media that you consume, be like Indiana Jones, and choose wisely.

Short Version

Pros:

• Great charisma and chemistry among everyone in the cast.
• Epic action sequences.
• Fun celebrity cameos.

Cons:

• Dialogue can be cringeworthy.
• Story is as shallow as a puddle.
• Sometimes the movie is too painfully self-aware of how cliched and meta it is.

Verdict: *** (three out of five stars).