{"id":44150,"date":"2019-08-12T10:47:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T14:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=44150"},"modified":"2019-08-12T10:48:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T14:48:12","slug":"fast-furious-presents-hobbs-shaw-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/08\/fast-furious-presents-hobbs-shaw-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw \u2013 Movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nlast few \u201cFast & Furious\u201d movies have gotten a little heavy on the number\nof characters. The franchise isn\u2019t as crowded as, say, the MCU, but it\u2019s\nbecoming increasingly reasonable to say that \u201canybody who\u2019s anybody\u201d has been\nin one of these movies. So it makes sense that the cast has to be splintered\noff into two factions: one presumably including Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel)\nand his \u201cfamily,\u201d and the one featured in this movie, which includes Luke Hobbs\n(Dwayne Johnson), Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), and their respective families. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Hobbs\nhas been a \u201cFast & Furious\u201d mainstay since the fifth movie. A DSS agent initially\ntasked with capturing Dom and his team, Hobbs eventually saw that they weren\u2019t\nthe true enemy and learned to work with them, not against them. Shaw\u2019s role is\na little more complicated. The brother of sixth-movie villain Owen Shaw,\nDeckard declared war on Dom and his family when they critically injured his\nbrother. He even went so far as to kill Dom\u2019s friend Han. However, in the\neighth movie, he somewhat redeemed himself by working to defeat terrorist\nCipher (for personal reasons, not the greater good) and save Dom\u2019s baby. This\nwas enough to make him a \u201cgood guy\u201d in the eyes of the script, but it wasn\u2019t\nenough to make him a good guy in the eyes of the fans (who famously were not\nready to forgive him for the death of Han), or in the eyes of Hobbs,\napparently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nnew movie sees Hobbs and Shaw forced to team up by the CIA, Hobbs because a\nformer colleague recommends him, and Shaw because his sister Hattie (Vanessa\nKirby) is a person of interest in the mission. Hattie has injected herself with\na virus that is capable of killing millions, and the theory is that she wants\nto weaponize it for nefarious purposes, but really she\u2019s trying to keep it out\nof the hands of the evil Brixton (Idris Elba). Shaw isn\u2019t willing to let Hattie\ndie to destroy the virus, but keeping her alive for potential extraction means\nshe\u2019s susceptible to capture by Brixton and his terrorist organization. During\na rare moment where all three main characters are on the same page, they flee\nto Samoa, where Hobbs must seek help from his estranged family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This\nbeing a \u201cFast & Furious\u201d movie, even one without Vin Diesel, you can\nprobably guess what kinds of shenanigans will transpire over the course of the\nfilm. There will be fighting, car chases, broken glass, fireballs, and all\nmanner of affronts to the laws of physics. The dialogue too is entirely typical\nof this kind of blockbuster, with the one-liners coming\u2026 quickly and with figurative\nmalice. The title characters do a lot of bickering, but Hobbs only seems to not\nwant to work with Shaw because they\u2019ve been opponents in the past and not\nbecause, say, he terrorized a hospital in the seventh movie. There are plenty\nof good reasons to not want to work with Deckard Shaw, can\u2019t the movie give\nHobbs one that isn\u2019t petty? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cHobbs\n& Shaw\u201d is every bit a middle-of-the-road action movie. It doesn\u2019t reach\nthe heartfelt highs of \u201cFurious 7,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t detract from the series\u2019\napex like \u201cThe Fate of the Furious.\u201d I spent much of the too-long runtime\ndebating which side of the recommendation median was for me, and then I learned\nthat a moviegoer seated near me had fallen asleep. I\u2019ve seen (well, heard,\nbecause of snoring) this happen many times over the years, but it has almost\nalways been in films that were either boring or had soothing properties. But\nthis is a \u201cFast & Furious\u201d movie. It\u2019s synonymous with zooming, crashing,\nineffective shooting, and explosions. If it\u2019s putting people to sleep, it\u2019s\nsimply not doing its job.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFast & Furious Presents: Hobbs\n& Shaw\u201d is rated PG-13 for prolonged sequences of action and violence,\nsuggestive material and some strong language. Its running time is 137 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             The last few \u201cFast & Furious\u201d movies have gotten a little heavy on the number of characters. The franchise isn\u2019t as crowded as, say, the MCU,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}