Film of the Week: Fast and Furious – Hobbs and Shaw

The Fast and Furious franchise has grown a lot since being about street racing with each new film raising the bar higher for just what can be achieved when it comes to car stunts. Branching off to absolutely unrealistic physics, the franchise is remaining strong. Being Universal’s biggest franchise at the time of writing this blog, there’s no wonder they want to add more properties to that success, and with the characters Hobbs and Shaw being two of the most popular among audiences, it does make sense to drag them into a spin-off film.

Being a part of a franchise that had cars as their core element, this spin-off film had far more spying action than actual car action. You could take Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham, give them different characters but put them in the exact same movie, slap on a different title, I’m confident no one would batter an eyelid. It absolutely felt as if this spin-off movie was done purely to make money for the main franchise, but to contradict that criticism, whilst watching it, I didn’t care. Hobbs and Shaw is an entertaining spy movie with the characters we like from the main franchise. The product as a whole may feel like a cash grab, with comparatively hardly any car action to the rest of the main franchise, but the entertainment value between the two characters were non-stop, and when the car action did crop up, it was in the same tone as the current fast and furious – crazy and utterly unrealistic stunts which defy all known physics, especially the train of dune buggies attached to a military-grade helicopter preventing it from taking off. The car stunts weren’t anywhere near as massive as what are featured in the main franchise, but there was no need to be.

The spin-off was made to be in a lower key than the main franchise, and so the car stunts had to be synonymous with that tone, and the filmmakers achieved that perfectly.

OK, so I’ve praised it, but unfortunately I did spot a couple of things I feel should be brought up. The first is the scene on the plane; it felt as if it went on a little too long – it didn’t fit the pacing of the rest of the film. It was there to showcase their banter and to set up a character cameo who’d be useful later on in the film, but we already know how they act when in close vicinity of each other, that’s purely the reason this film got made in the first place, and the character cameo was played by Kevin Hart, who took an uncredited role. It makes sense in the story to meet someone who would be helpful later on, but the scene could have been played out differently to make it fit with the rest of the film. The way Kevin Hart was introduced looked like he was just there because we know both Dwayne and Kevin get along well.

Ryan Reynolds’ uncredited appearance was much larger than Kevin’s and was handled a bit better, but unfortunately Ryan’s character was too Deadpool-like, implying that we’re only bringing in Ryan Reynolds because he’s currently one of the biggest actors in Hollywood at the moment, and if he acts like Deadpool then we’ll win all the audience members. However, as stated his character was handled better than Kevin’s was, and I recently found out that he’s also the voice of the Eteon, which I had never had guessed until I had read it myself as they change his voice so much to ramp up the mystery of who it really is.

Other than those two criticism which I know can be argued against as being nick picks, the film as a whole was entertaining and does fit nicely within the Fast and Furious franchise, even though it could just be another spy movie but had the Fast and Furious name stamped on it anyways to rake in as much money as possible, and you know what, I’m OK with that. If they make a sequel, I’ll be waiting in line to watch it, that’s for sure.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)