Movie Review - Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ***½ (out of 5) (PG-13) Who’d have thought there’d be a Fast & Furious sequel without Vin Diesel! This one’s more of a spinoff, with The Rock and Jason Statham’s titular characters reluctantly teaming up for another world-saving adventure. Primarily due to the sparring and squabbling between the co-stars, this one is also played more for laughs than the preceding entries in the franchise. But the laughs do not come at the expense of the mandatory panoply of over-the-top action scenes. That’s probably why it runs over two hours.

The premise is that a vast, mysterious organization worthy of a James Bond opus tries to get a vial of a super virus that would kill off much of humanity... allegedly to save the planet. Seems similar to Thanos’ plans in the last couple of Avenger epics, eh? A loyal British agent (Vanessa Kirby) injects herself with the virus to foil their attempted grab. Our guys have to find her and the virus before the bad guys, whose minions are led by a teched-up, supercharged soldier/cyborg (Idris Elba). He seems to relish the role of exuding power and evil, with a slight undercurrent of humanity.

As expected, there’s a high body count with relatively little gore, plenty of big-scale fights and chases, and one uncredited appearance by a familiar comic actor. The villains’ motorcycles are particularly well designed and deployed. The proceedings may seem longer and more complicated than called for, but the running time goes quickly. As it must with light-hearted action fare. Good summer fun, if you don’t think too much. (8/2/19)