Ever since hulking lawman Hobbs (Johnson), a loyal agent of America's Diplomatic Security Service, and lawless outcast Shaw (Statham), a former British military elite operative, first faced off in 2015’s Furious 7, the duo have swapped smack talk and body blows as they’ve tried to take each other down. But when cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist Brixton (Idris Elba) gains control of an insidious bio-threat that could alter humanity forever — and bests a brilliant and fearless rogue MI6 agent (The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby), who just happens to be Shaw’s sister — these two sworn enemies will have to partner up to bring down the only guy who might be badder than themselves.
The Fast & Furious franchise has been a guilty pleasure of mine for quite a while. They have always been reasonably entertaining, but since Fast Five, the series has really upped the ante with each successive film. The fact that I got into them at all says a lot about the energy of the films because I do not care about cars at all. I couldn't describe a single car in the franchise beyond giving a magnitude of "shinyness".
Combine this with the WWE and movies like The Transporter being a big part of my millennial formative years, there was a lot of reasons to be excited about this film. The trailer really got me excited for the release of Hobbs & Shaw, but perhaps that's the problem; thanks to the hype machine, I went into this film with expectations.
We all know what this franchise is. It's a display of shiny cars, hot women, and explosions (in a universe that frequently defies physics; low gravity perhaps?). A series of action scenes linked together by some very thin lines of plot. Hobbs & Shaw is much of the same, and yet it didn't have the same effect that it used to have. There was a thin spattering of polite applause at the end of the film, but there was no excitement in the air. Something about this spin-off wasn't sitting right.
You could chalk it down to a couple key areas; the comedy and the over-powered characters. The film has very little in the way of plot. It revolves around finding the rogue MI6 agent, and a comment Hobbs' daughter makes about her family tree. The majority of the film's 136-minute runtime is taken up by banter between our lead protagonists, as they constantly bicker and antagonize each other. This is the source of the majority of the laughs, through either their pig-headed stubbornness or their naivety and ignorance. The fact that this carries on through 95% of the film does get a bit old after a while, with diminishing returns as you can't take the threat of global annihilation seriously when the heroes are quipping and impeding themselves constantly. It's the same issue with comedy horror films, where comedy releases tension, and without suspense and tension, the horror has no scares. In this case, the comedy makes it feel like the big antagonist is not actually a threat.
Credit to Idris Elba, he does a great job as the film's antagonist (and has an awesome Transformers-like motorbike) and does provide a suitable opposing force for Hobbs & Shaw. But he is the only one that can. Hobbs & Shaw have gone from being kick-ass to being invulnerable superheroes. This again downplays the threat from the antagonists when your antagonists can fall from a huge height, get into a big fight, and not be the slightest bit sluggish (not even as far as breathing heavily). There's nothing for the audience to invest in. We don't need to worry about the safety of our protagonists, so why would we care about anything else in the film?
Vanessa Kirby is a welcome addition to the franchise, while her superpowers (not literally) are still budding, she makes herself into the strong independent action heroine that the world wants to see. Capable of holding her own, intelligent, and unlike the stubborn men, she's capable of putting aside animosity for the sake of saving the world.
Jason Statham is everything he has always been. From The Transporter and The Mechanic franchises to Crank, The Expendables and Spy, Statham has had a very strict style in which he plays his characters; a consistent fighting style with his usual quips and sarcastic nature. Dwayne Johnson, on the other hand, has been steadily evolving as an actor moving from meathead to a more emotional actor that has greater character development. In the case of Hobbs & Shaw, however, Johnson has reverted back to a more primal form. The eyebrow is back, he's opening a can of whoop-ass, and his character development is simply there to lead to a new location for an action scene.
Development is so weak that every character has devolved into a caricature, the comedic elements undercut any form of danger or threats, the film spends much more time than necessary trying to force in the seeds of further sequels, and the car races are minimal and uninspired. I can't help but feel like this film is a huge misstep.
Even from a cinematography direction, so much of the film revolves around repetitive symmetrical framing of Johnson on the left and Statham on the right. A nice way to show their opposing personalities, and yet it gets stale and monotonous over time.
It is still far from being a bad film. It provides a good amount of laughs and has a good level of action to appeal to the masses. There are even a couple of cameo appearances that do match the tone of the film. It simply lacks the cohesiveness that the main Fast & Furious films had.