Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

I'm torn. I'm not a fan of the Fast & Furious movies. These holdovers from the 90s when action movies were all about how stupid they could be, how much they could blow up, and how much toxic masculinity they could celebrate. They were all style and no substance. But director David Leitch makes fun and usually not stupid movies... and Idris Elba who I could watch do anything. So this spin off featuring the cheesy but scene stealing characters of, well Hobbs and Shaw, is it going to be as mind numbingly dumb as the movies that spawned it? And can the cast and director find a way to pull this from the dumpster fire?

Well, one can't say Hobbs & Shaw is a good movie, but Leitch has taken this world and basically done the best one can with it. He sets it up perfectly. He introduces us to Elba's ridiculous villain (but it's Elba so who cares?) setting into motion the simple and straightforward plot. Then he shows us who each of the leads are, giving us just enough in case we haven't seen a F&F movie before, so we want to see what they'll get up to. Then he sets up the central conceit of the movie, the odd couple, buddy cop, best of frenemies trope. He lets Johnson and Statham ooze their off the charts charisma (well Johnson's at least, Statham is more riding his coattails). Finally he shoves in a bunch of action. And Leitch knows action. What he delivers is pure dumb action movie gold.

None of it is believable. All of it is formulaic. Its as predictable as they come. It is overblown and walks the line of ridiculous. The climax is so over the top you'd think it was Con Air. These are things that would normally sink a film for me. But Leitch plays to the film's strengths, self aware in the F&F limitations and just playing it straight for fun without succumbing to the genres low rent impulses. The screenwriters know what they are doing. While Hobbs & Shaw has a bit of a script 101 feel to it, it also does a great job of pulling that off. It's rather funny, embraces its action movie cliches, but does it without punching down. Basically Hobbs and Shaw is a good example of being exactly what a movie tries to do, not exceeding that, but doing just that.

Could this be the best F&F movie yet? In my opinion the F&F movies have been too corny, too ridiculous, and too generic, to be enough fun. I was always rolling my eyes too much to enjoy any of them. H&S pushes right up to this line but didn't quite cross it for me, so basically I had an okay time. So yeah. It's the best F&F movie so far.

But that's not really saying much.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Helen Mirren
Director: David Leitch
Writers: Chris Morgan, Drew Pearce