Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

(M) ★★★

Director: David Leitch.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza González, Eddie Marsan, Helen Mirren, Cliff Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Rob Delaney, Kevin Hart.

The new series of The Block was going to be lit.

Read my review of Fast Five here.
Read my review of Fast & Furious 6 here.
Read my review of Furious 7 here.
Read my review of The Fate Of The Furious (F&F8) here.

Here's a fun experiment - find someone who's never seen a Fast & Furious film. Then make them sit down and watch the first movie in the series (The Fast & The Furious from all the way back in 2001). Then get them to watch Hobbs & Shaw.

And then see if they can explain what the hell happened in between, and how these two films can possibly inhabit the same cinematic universe.

This spin-off is the ninth film in the series (although the actual Fast & Furious 9 is due out next year) and it certainly captures the over-the-top insanity and complete disregard for physics that the F&F franchise has made its stock-in-trade. There are still fast cars, although they are less prominent in this sidequel - this is less about cars, and more about Brosnan-era Bond-type OTT mayhem. Except on steroids. And possibly meth.

There is no subtlety here - Hobbs & Shaw makes past F&F movies look positively restrained. Remember when a high speed chase through tunnels under the Mexican border (see F&F4) seemed ludicrous? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The plot revolves around the unlikely pairing of Johnson's federal agent Hobbs (first seen in F&F5) and Statham's soldier-turned-mercenary Shaw (first seen in an F&F6 cameo). They team up to track a stolen programmable virus, which is in the hands of an MI6 agent (Kirby) who has seemingly gone rogue. Also on the trail is cybernetically enhanced baddie Brixton (Elba), who has his own designs on the technovirus.

The films in the F&F series have ranged from bad and dumb (2 Fast 2 Furious) to good and dumb (Fast Five and Furious 7), and this is somewhere in the middle. It's particularly idiotic, but there's enough fun to be had to make its gargantuan run time almost worthwhile.

First to the dumb stuff. The contrivances in the first act-and-a-half are a real stretch. To get Johnson and Statham's supposed sworn enemies to work together, but also to keep Kirby's MI6 agent on the run means no one's motives make any sense. And your suspension of disbelief has to be tuned pretty high to be on board from the start. As with previous instalments, the way anything works - physics, law enforcement, the media, airports - is disregarded and replaced with an in-film logic that is basically whatever the filmmakers want it to be.

But Hobbs & Shaw's biggest sin is its length. After reaching a place where the film should have ended, our lead trio (and the plot) keep on running. While this brings us to Samoa for a memorable climax and some sledgehammering of F&F's eternal maxim - family is the most important thing ever -  it stretches the film well past its end-by time.

But now the fun stuff, and top of that list is Idris Elba. Despite boasting paper-thin villains with dodgy plans for world domination, F&F has managed to get some good actors to go bad and have a blast in the process. Charlize Theron and Luke Evans, as well as Statham and Johnson, have proven enjoyable antagonists in the franchise, and you can add Elba to that roster. Again, his character has little depth and a ridiculous motive, but he's formidable and entertaining. And, if nothing else, it looks like Elba is having blast.

Ditto for Johnson and Statham. Even if their insults and banter occasionally sink, there is still a half-decent dynamic between them. Kirby is an underwritten third wheel, poorly served by the script, but the film is definitely stronger when the three of them are on screen together. It's also worth noting that Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart, despite seemingly dropping in to visit the set from different movies, give really good cameos.

There's a lot about this that is not worth caring about and it's too long by nearly half an hour. But it's still fun, it still has some good moments (particularly its somewhat redeeming Samoan showdown), and it's batshit insane. But you get the feeling that it knows it's batshit insane. And that kind of makes it all okay.