Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw Movie Review

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

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Written by: Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce (screenplay by),  Chris Morgan (story by),  Gary Scott Thompson (based on characters created by)
Directed by: David Leitch
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Helen Mirren, Cliff Curtis
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
Lawman Luke Hobbs and outcast Deckard Shaw form an unlikely alliance when a cyber-genetically enhanced villain threatens the future of humanity.

Verdict
This isn't a very good story, but the movie knows where to focus it's efforts. It's a lot of fun to see Johnson and Statham insulting each other and begrudgingly working together. This is less a movie, and more of a vehicle for them to roast each other and showcase ridiculous stunts.
This has a lot of over the top stunts for no real reason other than it's pretty cool. This is enjoyable as long as you expect a movie that has nothing to do with cars and lacks a cohesive story. Watch this if you want to see two stars hamming it amid lots of explosions.
It depends.

Review
From the very start it's easy to see how this franchise has transformed since the first entry eighteen years ago. I really like the first movie because it's passionate about cars. Even in the sequel cars were less of a focus. In this spinoff this movie forgets about cars and focuses on action with frenemies Hobbs and Shaw at the center of it all.

Idris Elba plays Bad Guy.

The movie is big, goofy, dumb fun. In one of the first scenes Idris Elba shows up. When Vanessa Kirby's character asks "Who are you?" Elba responds "Bad guy." That's the level of writing in this movie.

Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are Hobbs and Shaw.

Elba plays a cyborg, but that's not even a big reveal, it's just set dressing. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if the script was adapted from another script and forced to fit Hobbs and Shaw. I find it hard to believe this started as a Fast and Furious script.

Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham) are complete opposites. There's a split screen with both of them highlighting just how different they are. It's silly, but fun and that might as well be the tagline for the movie. Though I don't get why the movie implements so many Game of Thrones puns. That easily could be written away with it being Hobbs favorite show but too embarrassed to reveal that information, but the movie doesn't care.

Vanessa Kirby is also in the movie as Shaw's sister.

Hobbs and Shaw are forced to team up, against their will, to save the world. This begins them roasting each other for the duration of the movie. This gives them a great chemistry as frenemies.

As dumb as this movie is, it has it's moments. It's not far removed from being a B movie that somehow got a huge budget. Over the top doesn't even begin to describe this. I've seen so many crazy things in this like a flamethrower that knocks people back ten feet. This movie adheres to the rule of cool: if it's cool do it despite any flaws in logic.

Does this movie have a plot? Not really, it's a montage of crazy events from a wild science lab to a cyborg with a shape shifting bike to Keven Hartt dropping in just to crack jokes. Hobbs and Shaw even go to Samoa for hand to hand combat.

It's in Samoa that my favorite action set piece occurs. A souped up sport truck hooks a helicopter, a second truck hooks the first, and then a third jumps into the mix. It's the best kind of ridiculous. It's not a good movie by the metric of writing and story. It's dressed up with CGI and lots of action, but despite that it is entertaining.