Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

This review may contain spoilers!

Despite some impressive production elements this is ultimately a film with a weak script that too many people messed with, and the result speak for itself. I would give Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw a 6/10.

Hobbs and Shaw focuses on, well, Hobbs and Shaw from the Fast and Furious franchise. The chemistry between these two in Fast 8 was incredible and everyone was hankering for more so it's no surprise that we have a spinoff in which Agent Hobbs and crook with a heart of gold, Shaw, have to work together. In this film the pair race to save Shaw's sister from an bio-terrorist faction and extract the airborne toxin currently racing through her bloodstream. The film never commits itself strongly to the overarcing storyline but there are a number of scenes that show a lot of heart. I thought Shaw losing his temper and having a breakdown over his sister wanting to sacrifice herself rather than risk the virus getting airborne was great, also having Hobbs talk about why he left Samoa and what he did to his father was a powerful scene. The special effects used throughout this film are masterfully done, this franchise has been pulling off better and better looking visuals for years now so this is no surprise. The score for the film is adrenaline pumping and fast moving, while the soundtrack has a lot of fresh, cool moments of music that only serve to heighten the intensity of the feature.

Dwayne Johnson, who played Hobbs, is quite a powerful and intimidating presence throughout; Johnson has a natural charisma that bleeds through into his characters and makes them extremely entertaining to watch. Idris Elba, who played Brixton, does a lot of leg work to make his antagonist radiate power; to be very clear this character is one of the most poorly written I've seen this year and Elba turns him into incredible viewing. Vanessa Kirby, who played Hattie, really has one of the most consistent and well-delivered performances of the film; Kirby plays a very moral protagonist who has to sink to some dirtier tricks now that she's experiencing life on the run. Eliana Sua, who played Sam, is such a bright and funny performer amongst this cast; Sua and Johnson have a charming relationship that makes for a good onscreen father/daughter dynamic.

However, the best performance came from Jason Statham, who played Shaw. Both of the leads in this film are action/blockbuster legends but Statham has the experience and range that really sets him apart. I think the driving force behind why Shaw's character works so well in this film is that he has the most on the line, his sister's life literally hangs in the balance. Throughout the feature Statham deals his famous cocky dialogue and smooth lean into tough guy action. But what works in his favour is that you can see how worried he increasingly gets about his family, you get to see the fear he is holding throughout and when he unleashes that it makes for the best scene of the film.

Fast and the Furious as a franchise has been going more and more bonkers for years now and in a lot of ways that has worked out for them. This is where the easy ride stops I feel. Bringing in the guy who directed Deadpool 2 in to direct this paints a picture of what to expect, this is a Fast and Furious spinoff that is going to embrace the silliness and use a little of that fourth wall breaking humour to really make it work. But work it does not. The entire film feels like it has had too many voices involved in it creatively and so you wind up with a main story that is already overcharged with an action plot that is paper-thin at best but most of the time the tone is interrupted by this drive to become comedic. The whole film doesn't work as a comedy because the cast isn't strongly suited to it, so there are a number of scenes with empty jokes that fall flat over and over again. Placing in gratuitous cameos, easter eggs to old films the two leads have done and wrangling in Samoa as a setting all feel like choices made adjacent to the plot rather than for the plot, which is something you really feel as an audience member. If the entire film can't stand on it's own plot but rather needs Ryan Reynolds to pop into three scenes and wink at the camera then the movie is already a lost cause. As it stands the plot around a bio-terrorist group who want a virus so they can 'kill the weak' and give the planet to 'the strong' is a tale as old as time and very lazily delivered. The cinematography generally looks alright in the action sequences, though less so in the final act, but overall I was disappointed with how this was filmed. You go from scenes with quite a mild number of shots and angles taken to a scene where every possible way it can be filmed has been shoved into the scene; it gives the impression that this film is messy, unpolished and lacked clear vision.

Helen Mirren, who played Queenie, isn't used in the same effective way as she was in Fast 8; here Mirren is pushed into the background and presented more as a worried mother than a quick-witted criminal. Eiza Gonzalez, who played Madame M, isn't really all that much of a character; Gonzalez is only really here to be a minor love interest for Statham and has no real impact on the story. Eddie Marsan, who played Professor Andreiko, has had some real stinker roles of late; Marsan's meek scientist is a completely generic, uninteresting role who serves more use as a plot device than anything else. Cliff Curtis, who played Jonah, really shouldn't have tried to do more of an Islander accent when he is New Zealand one was bleeding through like that; Curtis as Johnson's brother was already a hard sell without him self-sabotaging himself like that. Lori Pelenise Tuisano, who played Sefina, just delivered some of the most awkward cringeworthy dialogue of the film; the blind optimism and empty thematic messages of this onscreen mother really drove up how cheesy this film became. Rob Delaney and Ryan Reynolds, who played Agent Loeb and Locke respectively, gave polar performances that equally served the film in no good way; Delaney's mild mannered delivery shunted him right into the background while Reynolds' oddball Deadpool-like humour makes him look like a one trick pony at present. Kevin Hart, who played Air Marshall Dinkley, is a cameo that does no wonders for this film with a performer who clearly doesn't care what he's doing; Hart has no interest in presenting a character and flubs some easy comedy that interrupts the flow of the film.