Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw review: Complete nonsense but disarmingly pleasurable

Dir: David Leitch. Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, and Helen Mirren. 12A, 135 mins

We’ve officially entered a new era of cinema. Hobbs & Shaw, the ninth film in The Fast and the Furious franchise, leaves no room for doubt about that. Call it post-post-post modernism, if you will. In the age of streaming and 4K televisions, as the theatrical experience faces the threat of its own extinction, Hobbs & Shaw has retaliated by rejecting outright the traditional narrative experience. This is barely a movie. It’s more like a hedonistic pursuit. Would you like to see Dwayne Johnson take down a helicopter with his bare hands? Here, enjoy. Would you like to see a bulletproof Idris Elba repeatedly call himself “black Superman”? Here, enjoy. Would you like to see Helen Mirren find the perfect shade of lipstick to match a prison jumpsuit? Here, enjoy. It’s hard to deny that it’s effective. Hobbs & Shaw might be complete nonsense, but it also consistently fires up the brain’s pleasure centres in a way that feels disarming.

Of course, The Fast and the Furious series has always prioritised showmanship over logic and reason. What started out, nearly two decades ago, with a crew of illegal street racers who made a living stealing electronic goods, now sees them engaged in international espionage, regularly going up against trains, tanks, and nuclear submarines. Hobbs & Shaw, officially the first spin-off film of the franchise, grabs two former antagonists and throws them together for the hell of it, as DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and mercenary Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) are forced to put aside their differences and work together to save the world from a deadly virus. It’s currently in the hands of Deckard’s estranged sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), an MI6 agent who, as a result of her actions, is now the primary target of cyber genetically-enhanced super-soldier Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). All Deckard and Hattie’s incarcerated crime lord mother (Mirren) wants, meanwhile, is a visit from her kids.

Yet, Hobbs & Shaw goes one step beyond its predecessors. With the help of a few surprise cameos, there are nods to other, only tangentially-related franchises. A film you may barely remember is confirmed as an official part of The Fast and the Furious cinematic universe. It’s meta in a way that feels rather slapdash. Maybe this is a natural reaction to Marvel’s growing dominance and its fixation on interconnection, but it could also be a sign that those behind The Fast and the Furious films have long stopped caring about anything but providing momentary joys.

And, certainly, it’s an emotion that Hobbs & Shaw isn’t in short supply of. Screenwriters Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce know how irresistible a pairing Johnson and Statham make, allowing the film to be as much an odd-couple comedy as it is a high-octane action. Only in the world of The Fast and the Furious – and only in comparison to Johnson – would Statham ever be considered the nimble, skinny guy, but the film goes all-in with the concept and makes him the target of many a “hobbit” joke. Unsurprisingly, the insults they sling at each other are excessively immature (there’s an extended bit about the fake name Mike Oxmaul which, if you don’t get it, read it again out loud), but director David Leitch frequently frames the duo in close-ups where they’re almost staring dead into the camera, imitating the unique thrill of having Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson personally call you an asshole. A little more clever is the way the director finds visual contrasts between the two characters, using a split-screen to compare their morning routines (in which Hobbs eats a spoonful of dry coffee) and having them pummel bad guys down separate, parallel hallways.

Leitch, whose credits include John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2, definitely knows his way around a fight scene and his handling of the film’s hand-to-hand combat is sublime. There’s an elegance to his approach that lets the choreography take centre stage – take, for example, the climactic showdown in Samoa, where guns are traded for traditional weaponry. Those scenes feel elevated far beyond the usual sensory overload of a Fast and the Furious film, but the same can’t be said for any vehicle-based set piece. There, it’s business as usual and there are so many cuts it can be impossible to tell what’s going on.

Thankfully, there’s room also for the franchise’s newcomers. Elba does what he can with a character that utters the words “genocide schmenocide”, while Kirby tackles Hattie with such wit and ferocity that she manages to transcend most of the script’s gender cliches – it’s grating that she’s constantly referred to as “the girl”, even by her own brother. Her performance, in fact, is pretty exemplary of what Hobbs & Shaw is as a film. It ignores the limitations and does its very best to have fun, even if that means breaking the rules (of both convention and reason) along the way.

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is out now