Thursday, August 1, 2019

Film Review - Fast and Furious: Hobbs and Shaw (2019)

Hobbs and Shaw is the new spin off movie in the Fast and Furious franchise and sees Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) teaming up albeit reluctantly against a mad industrialist (Idris Elba) who plans to use a lethal virus embedded in the DNA of Shaw’s sister (Vanessa Kirby) to cull the world’s population.

Hobbs and Shaw for the most part is good fun that really falls on the chemistry between Mr Johnson and Mr Statham to carry the film and they carry the film well as their chemistry for the most part works, the 2 have some great lines, gags and attempts to one up each other that for the most part made me smile and made me laugh which is more than I can say for a lot of other big movies released so far this year.

They are also nicely backed up by Mr Elba who is a lot of fun as the villain and when he gets the chance to shine on screen his own natural charisma comes across well and should he get the chance to succeed Daniel Craig as James Bond after he leaves the role I feel he will do a very good job in that part and become embraced in that role meanwhile Ms Kirby who you might remember as the White Widow from last year’s Mission Impossible: Fallout is pretty good here but she is mainly a walking plot device outside of a few good fight scenes.

Sadly however this movie is simply far too long for its own good and as a result of that I began to not only get a bit bored with the film but also feel that it was going to be a predictable outcome, the film runs about 2 and a quarter hours and it felt more like 2 and a half hours at times and movies like this one or Shazam or even Captain Marvel from earlier this year which I thought was pretty good if nothing overly fantastic they so want to capture that Top Gun/Lethal Weapon/Big and Tango and Cash vibe from decades past.

But those movies were not these 2 hour plus behemoths they were for the most part 90 to 115 minutes and as a result they were much stronger in terms of their balance as movies because they had a tighter runtime to play around with now it feels like that tightness is gone and whatever goes if the actors are sitting/standing around on set and improvising and I’m sorry but I don’t like my movies as a fucking comedy club for the most part sometimes it works but most times it doesn’t and I just want a goddamn editing machine to cut the damn thing down cod sarn it.

And so that was Hobbs and Shaw and it’s a fun movie with a good villain and fun leads but its 2 hour plus runtime saw it overstay its welcome for me, 3 out of 5.

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