The Fast & Furious films are big, dumb action movies. No one is going to dispute that. But they're big, dumb action movies that are wildly successful because they traffic in a seemingly effortless earnestness that allows the audience to completely buy into Vin Diesel's notions about family, loyalty and a code of honor that cannot be broken at any cost. They're straight-faced action sagas detailing the finest fictional bromances of our time and are rightfully beloved for it.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, the franchise's first spinoff without Diesel or any of the original cast, jettisons that sort of stirring gravitas for a never-ending series of cheap jokes and celebrity cameos. It's a pandering, cynical film so desperate to be loved that it feels less like a Fast & Furious film and more like Dwayne Johnson's other, lesser successful action pictures that show up in theaters one day and leave people's minds forever two weeks later. Johnson now famously refuses to add any depth to his movies past giving the audience what he thinks they want, and his eagerness to please with this film must have hit new heights after his much publicized feud with Diesel during the filming of The Fate of the Furious. So, yes, we get a joke about Johnson cocking his eyebrow. Yes, we get oodles of overly written tough-guy, buddy-movie-101 talk between Johnson's Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw that takes the gist of their Fate scenes (which worked well in short bursts) and blows it up to an interminable two-plus hours. And when things start to feel a little stale, the only solution this film has is to wheel in a famous face from outside the F&F universe in a desperate ploy to inject some life into it. It's an engine fire of a film compared to the mainline saga's smooth-revving hum.
Hobbs & Shaw opens on neither Hobbs nor Shaw, but rather on Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), Shaw's MI-6 agent sister. Hattie and a British strike team attempt to take down a cybernetically-enhanced ex-agent named Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), who has developed a super virus capable of wiping out all of humanity. The assault goes sideways, and Hattie ends up injecting herself with the virus, giving her only a few days to live. Rather than head straight back to MI-6 like a sensible agent, Mattie goes on the run. I think this is because Lore works for some evil shadow agency named Eteon that apparently controls all the world's news organizations. And Lore quickly changes the narrative so it looks like Hattie slaughtered her squadmates and stole the virus. I don't know why MI-6 would choose to believe that over their own agent, but nothing about this movie makes a lick of sense or holds up at all under scrutiny. Eteon has some stupid plan where it wants to replace regular shlubby humans with upgraded cyborg people. I'd put them near the bottom of the list of nefarious crime organizations, well below SPECTRE, the Syndicate and the GOP.
DSS Agent Hobbs (now apparently the U.S.'s preeminent super-soldier) is tasked by the CIA to track down the virus while rehabilitated mercenary and Han-murderer Shaw is out to save his sister's life. Against their strenuous objections — mostly concerning Hobbs's face or Shaw's accent — the two are forced to team up to rescue Mattie, deactivate the virus and take down Lore. Let's be clear though, the plot only exists to service all the cornball machisma and a series of loud but not terribly clever action sequences. Hobbs & Shaw was directed by ex-stuntman David Leitch, and I honestly find it hard to believe it's the same David Leitch who helmed Atomic Blonde and co-directed John Wick. The hand-to-hand stuff is average at best (certainly nowhere near the level of Wick), and the vehicular mayhem lacks the propulsive energy Justin Lin brings to the table in the installments he directs.
In the final third, Hobbs & Shaw tries to pay some basic lip service to the franchise's family-based ideals by having our titular twosome travel to Samoa, where Hobbs is given some back story and re-unities with his ridiculously large extended family. But seemingly hundreds of Samoan extras can't disguise the fact that the movie fails to create any emotional bond between the audience and its primary characters past what you carried over from the other films. Johnson just plays himself, something typical for him these days. Statham fares better, channeling that suave, roguish action-star persona he handles so well. Still, at no point does he get to have as much fun as he did with that baby in F8. Elba is a long way from The Wire, and honestly I'd rather watch him lead semi-interesting misfires like The Dark Tower than see him get stranded playing a generic villain with an ill-defined set of enhance abilities. Kirby is a strikingly attractive woman who carries a fierceness in her every move. (I'd love to see her get the kind of action-heroine lead role that Charlize Theron seems to have a monopoly on.) But, aside for a few head-scissor moves, Hattie is sadly not given much to do here but serve as a point of soreness between Hobbs and Shaw. Shaw is over-protective; Hobbs might want to bone her. Hattie remains a non-character. At one point she plants a sudden, aggressive kiss on Hobbs that's almost identical to Kirby's sudden, aggressive kiss on Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Sudden, aggressive kisses are apparently Vanessa Kirby's thing!
For those wondering if and how Hobbs & Shaw connects to the Furious-verse overall, it does set up some stuff that might connect down the road (more on that in a minute) but is largely a stand-alone piece of work, highlighting the real-life rift between Johnson and Diesel. There's an overt nod to The Italian Job, an early Statham hit, in this movie (which practically puts it in the same universe), but Dom Toretto and company are never once mentioned. Outside of a quick bit with Helen Mirren as Shaw's mom, there are no cameos from other Fast & Furious cast members.
Well, maybe there isn't.
SPOILERS INCOMING. AVERT YOUR EYES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW.
You see, in the film it's revealed that Eteon is headed by a mystery villain — someone who is never seen, only heard and uses voice-changing software to disguise himself. Toward the end, the movie flat-out states that it's someone that Hobbs and Shaw (and presumably the audience) already know. A couple of times the voice-changing software eases up — and maybe it was me projecting? — but the voice sounds like it could belong to exactly the guy long-time Fast & Furious fans want it to belong to. My specific thought was: Well, this movie sucks but at least a glorious reveal could be forthcoming.
And then it never comes. We don't find out who's on the other end of the voice-changer, as that revelation is apparently being held for Fast 9 (god let's hope) or Hobbs & Shaw 2 (kill me now). It could be the guy we want it to be or somebody else or a new character altogether. The whole thing ends up being one big tease, which is why I don't feel the least bit bad about spoiling it for you now as it cheats the audience out of the one interesting thing the movie has going for it. Maybe this is part one of some grand master plan long-time F&F writer Chris Morgan has cooked up and will pay off in fun ways down the road. But right here and now it makes Hobbs & Shaw feel not just inadequate but downright incomplete.
Incompleteness has never been a problem in the mainline films, despite the fact that they operate like one big muscle-infused soap opera. I'll admit I've leaned toward being #TeamVin all along, but Hobbs & Shaw, which ports over the franchise's blustery action histrionics but forgets its heart, cements my allegiances. Somebody wake me when Dom comes rolling back around the corner in his Charger. Until then, I'll be drinking a Corona and trying to forget all about this candy-ass spin-off.
