Author: Mario Petkovski
Many people think that the Fast & Furious franchise should have stopped at Fast Five which was immensely entertaining. From then, each movie went from cars movie to full-on sci-fi with skydiving cars in Furious 7, to launching a torpedo by the Rock with his bare hands in The Fate of the Furious.
The first Fast & Furious movie came up in 2001 when New England Patriots were favorites in the NFL odds – nothing changed there. The movies went far from the good old street race, pimped out stereos down to the ground. Newer movies are absurd and targeted for impossible action defying the laws of physics.
They look more like Mission Impossible movies than Fast & Furious. However, they thought that the franchise needs another separation where all the bad guys from previous movies come together to defeat the greater evil.
Hobbs & Shaw falls is even more action mad movie that mostly has nothing to do with cars. Although it is a different flavor of Fast & Furious movie, there is plenty of vehicular carnage as we would expect as well as crazy spy intelligence hacking sprinkled with some comedy. This is a movie where two special agents face off against a cult that believes that humanity’s future lies in cyber-augmentation.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Jason Statham are incredible to watch, and they are the right actors for action movies as we’ve seen before. Venessa Kirby (Hattie) is also part of the team that steals the show with extraordinary fighting skills followed by fatality. Idris Elba coming as Brixton Lore is the villain that tries to steal the bioweapon from Shaw’s sister Hattie.
David Leitch is the director of this movie and that clears a lot of things since we know that he directed John Wick. He infused the movie with an unexpected object that becomes deadly weapons (similar to John Wick) and at some point, Jason Statham uses a toaster to take out enemies. However, the camera moves are brilliant.
He seems to develop different camera movements for each actor, for example, the camera moves quickly when the nimble Jason is fighting, slows down for Kirby’s brutal execution and widens for capturing the immense strength from The Rock. David Leitch confirmed that he wanted to take Keanu Reeves into this movie, but negotiations did not go as planned.
As in any Fast & Furious movie, we must hear about the importance of the family and devotion, this movie is not any different. However, this time the director wanted to connect with the roots of one character and stick with that until the end. The movie brings warmth as it is infused with small pre-battle smack talk and comedy that lightens the action movie.
Both of them are incredible action actors and despite some jokes, they really pulled this through only with their incredible talent to make an action movie that is at the same time thrilling and charming to watch. Since we know their characters from the previous movies, it is expected to see plenty of vulgar insults that are well balanced. Their chemistry is highest as it gets, and we should see more movies where these macho actors work together.
All in all, this movie is far off from the franchise that started Fast & Furious movies and it looks like it is made only for the sake of the paycheck, rather than following with deeper storytelling. We would definitely want more down to earth movie from the franchise with the good old street racing, pimp out cars and money chasing action. The franchise is about to close with an additional two movies that are scheduled for 2020 and 2021. Maybe the Fast & Furious 9 and 10 will refresh our memories with remaking the originals.
Surprisingly though, the movie is actually quite well rated in IMDB, with 7/10. Even Rotten Tomatoes does not rate the movie too low, with 67% on Tomatometer and 89% of audience approval. Quoting Matthew Rosza, from Salon.com, “it’s a thoroughly fun action comedy that delivers exactly what it promises – and if the screening I attended is any indication, kids will love it”.
