Butting Heads

Conditions: Slightly Mad

Film Review: Hobbs and Shaw

Inevitably, the two head lunks of the Fast and Furious Franchise butted heads one time too many, and Vin Diesel put his bigger foot down.  And so The Rock was banished from the fair kingdom of Furious Fastness and sent off to make a lot of money from other kinds of action films.  And yet franchises, like life, always find a way.  And so it was a new deal was formed between the studio and The Rock to form a spin off from the F&F timeline.  Swept up in this change was Jason Statham's character too, and so we have the first adventures of Hobbs and Shaw.

And from the opening credits the film wants very much to emphasize how opposite these two are.  Hobbs is all simple strength while Shaw is smooth finesse.  Shaw will put your head through the wall, while Hobbs will put the wall through your head.  In the standard F&F tradition both are contacted by the government to help out with a problem regarding some madman who's gone mad.  This time it's ...Idris Elba?  Ok fine.  Idris, an ex soldier like Shaw who now has some kind of electro-spine thing and is backed by a shadowy organisation, is after a deadly virus that an MI6 agent, now on the run, was forced to inject into herself to stop him getting it.  Because he wants to kill everyone on earth or something.  And the agent is, dun dun dun, Shaw's sister.  Well it wouldn't be F&F without fambily.

So Hobbs and Shaw are tasked to team up, find her, and help her escape from Idris and also get the virus out before it activates, necessitating a long trip to Russia to try and get help with the virus extraction part, and then finally to Samoa so Hobb's extended fambily can all come together and fight Idris's army of goons.  And while all the fighting is a highlight, the real fun of this film is in the bickering.  Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham bounce insults off each other all the way through, and most of the time it's hilarious.  They disagree on almost everything, and are constantly putting each other down or out.  Maybe this is the modern version of Abbot and Costello, or Daffy and Bugs, but it is the real main reason for watching this thing.  Three put downs out of five.

- Peace out