Film Review: Hobbs & Shaw

I’m not going to beat around the bush, Hobbs & Shaw is completely and utterly ridiculous, it often makes no sense and it has very little substance apart from over-the-top action for over 2 hours… It’s not a great movie, at all. But, I’m not ashamed to admit that despite this, I had a smile on my face throughout. Hobbs & Shaw is the best bad movie I’ve seen this year.

If you’ve stuck around with the Fast & Furious franchise then you’ll already know that they’ve gradually been becoming crazier as time has gone on, they’re a shadow of the earlier films and quite frankly, they’re a completely different beast altogether. Hobbs & Shaw is no exception to this, ramping up the crazy to the extreme, the villain is a cybernetically enhanced super-human, for Christ’s sake. But, I will give the film credit, it is completely self-aware of how bonkers it is and it’s not trying too hard to be taken seriously. Hobbs & Shaw knows it’s audience, it’s not going for any awards and it’s just trying to be fun and entertaining. I would bet that, for many of you, if you just go into this film with low expectations, switch off your brain and not analyze everything, you’re probably going to have fun in some way.

The biggest positive of this film are the two leads, Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs) and Jason Statham (Shaw) have great on-screen chemistry and it’s obvious why the powers-that-be chose these two characters to lead the first spin-off film in the franchise. The back and forth banter between the two is often very funny at times and it’s a partnership that works. Vanessa Kirby is also great and she gels with the two leads well to create a very charismatic, entertaining trio. Idris Elba is also pretty good as the villain Brixton Lore, although I still find it crazy that he agreed to a role like this, he must have been paid handsomely!

The action, unsurprisingly, is mad. The film has so many action sequences I started to lose count, and just when you thought they couldn’t get any stupider, the film finds a way to surprise you. I have genuinely seen superhero films that have more grounded, believable action than the stuff you see in Hobbs & Shaw, I was sometimes cracking up laughing at some of it because it was so ludicrous and nonsensical, and I’m sure that this was probably the intended effect, because once again, I was entertained.

Apart from these two things, there’s not really much else to say about this film. The plot is generic, clichéd, and is simply a means to move one massive action sequence on to another action sequence. Very little care or attention has gone into anything else, which became apparent in one particular moment which starts off at night, and then in the next scene it is in broad daylight, you could forgive it until there is a line that explicitly states all of this has occurred in about 6 minutes. Once again, I was cracking up laughing at how crazy and bad this was, but as it was near the end of the film, I had fully accepted what I was watching and just went with it. If this had been any other movie I’d probably be ripping in to it like hell, but there’s a certain charm I found with Hobbs & Shaw which for some reason, made me a lot more forgiving.

I can’t shy away from the fact that on so many levels, this was a terrible movie. But I also can’t shy away from the fact that I was entertained by it all and had a great time. Sometimes, it’s fun to just sit back and watch a film like this that doesn’t require any thinking or analyzing. It’s a standard summer blockbuster, and a good indication as to where the Fast & Furious franchise is going, it’s only a matter of time before we see these characters in space! (Seriously, I can see it happening.)

The score I’m going to give this film is going to be seen as quite generous by some, but I’ve warned you about the fact it’s bad. If you go and see it and you’re for whatever reason not as entertained as I was, then that’s on you! But I’d happily watch it again, so screw it, Hobbs & Shaw somehow gets a thumbs up from me.

I give Hobbs & Shaw a 6.5/10.