Movie goers fire up your nitrous oxide engines, and race to the movie theater, because the next film in the long running Fast & Furious franchise is back for more. Thankfully, it’s back like an old friend and not a bad case of hemorrhoids. In the latest movie, Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham) are out of prison. They still hate each other, but fate brings them together again when Shaw’s sister and rogue M16 bad ass Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) turns up. As brother and sister reunite, they team up with Hobbs in order to stop a cybernetically-enhanced anarchist Brixton Lore, (Idris Elba) bent on evolving humanity in his image and purging the world of nonworthy humans by weigh of bio-warfare. First off, a guy who basically becomes the Terminator and wants everyone else to be like him is far from being an original villain or story, yet I suppose it works for the sake a of fun, summer blockbuster that the Fast & Furious movies are at this point. Nevertheless, I do like the dynamic between Luke Hobbs: the all-American family man/ bad ass super cop and Deckard Shaw: former British Special Forces Soldier who hates authority, and Hobbs. The two exchange such humorous banter in the film such as the scene when they said what they hate most about each other. For Hobbs, he said that it was Shaw’s nasally, annoying voice, and Shaw stated that he hated Hobbs’s oversized face, especially his forehead. They went into much greater detail than that of course, and it was one of the films funniest moments for sure. The action in Hobbs & Shaw is good, although somewhat scaled back compared to previous Fast & Furious films. Aside from the cars trying to bring down the helicopter scene, there wasn’t hardly any car chase scenes at all, which is what the series has always been known for. However, the film does do a solid job of explaining the Shaw family history, as well as Hobbs’s. With Deckard’s mother in prison and his sister a rogue spy, the Shaw family is more like Married with Children and less like the Brady Bunch, in a good way. And I do like when Hobbs went to his homeland of Samoa to ask for his brother’s help. An origin story element that is more believable, because Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson is in fact half Samoan. Overall, Hobbs & Shaw had plenty of laughs, as well as some butt kicking moments as par the course for the series. And this is proof that a Fast & Furious movie without Vin Diesel can work. Although I still, like many fans, miss Paul Walker and feel that the series could have easily ended after Furious 7. Hobbs & Shaw is the ninth movie in the series and if there is money to made, then like anything else, their will be more Fast & Furious movies in the pipeline. This one may have lacked the car chase action sequences that the series made famous, but the comedy, characters and two surprise cameos made up for the films shortcomings.
Nerdish Rating
4 out of 5
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