Hobbs and Shaw: Run Fast and Furious from this big dumb bag of boredom
The CIA needs the best to catch a killer virus and in the Fast and the Furious universe I guess that means Hobbs and Shaw.
A fancy virus is stolen by the good guys from the bad guys with surviving member Hattie (Kirby) on the run and infected. The CIA gets together two crazy guys who know how to get jobs done, giant muscle man all about family Hobbs (Johnson) and wiry tough man all about family Shaw (Statham). The two of them track down Hattie in London and proceed to tear that town apart with impressive stunt work and a never-ending, monotonous, skull-emptying amount of insults right out of Wrestlemania. We find out Hattie and Shaw are brother and sister, fulfilling one family requirement. Then the actual wrestling starts with the three bad asses on the run to Samoa where they fulfill Hobbs family requirement, telling a moving story about a family of former criminals running a global custom car enterprise. More action! More stunts! More insults until they decide to stop insulting each other. From the beginning where he introduces himself as "the bad guy," augmented "Black Superman" Brixton (Elba) chases Hattie to get back the virus so his company can use it to go Thanos and kill the weak people in the world. Things go boom, cars go vroom, a helicopter goes zoom. Throughout the movie, impressive stunts are running the show to the detriment of all else. The story is dull and unmotivated, Idris Elba is wasted, and even the family elements come off as pat and unnecessary. Halfway through I found myself paying more attention to all the useless timers the movie presents. The virus will break down and kill the world in 48 hours? Plane trips from London to Russia to Samoa go supersonic so the virus goes unleashed. How long does it take for the sun to rise in Samoa? About five minutes from full dark to hard shadows, something that normally takes over an hour everywhere else. The point being, I should not have even noticed if the movie was doing its job. Director David Leitch had some impressive showings with John Wick and Atomic Blonde but Hobbs and Shaw does not work.
Hobbs and Shaw isn't a bad film, but it makes the biggest mistake of being boring while thinking it is more clever than it is.
