Hobbs and Shaw (4/5 Stars)

I have never had the opportunity to admit this in my movie review blog, but I have actually seen several of the Fast & Furious movies. I forget exactly which ones, but it hardly matters. They are all the same. Alpha males, fast cars, good-looking women. Oh and family, every single Fast & Furious movie is about family.

You need to be a good sport to watch a Fast & Furious movie. They are stupid, but if you play their game, well the stupid works. In this movie, a kidnapping takes place in a skyscraper. The bad guys bust through the window about fifty stories up and haul off a woman down the side of the building using very long ropes. Shaw decides to take the elevator down. Hobbs decides to jump out the window. His plan is to use gravity to catch up on the escaping bad guys heading down the ropes, to grab a hold of one to stop his fall, punch him in the face, and then jump to the next bad guy etc. This plan is stupid but it works. One must lend a lot of credit to the actors, in particular Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who is one of the best at keeping it straight in the face of endless absurdities.

This movie is shameless. It stars a few of the newer stars of the Fast & Furious movies, Jason Statham (“Shaw”) and Dwayne Johnson (“Hobbs”) and adds the one and only Idris Elba (“Black Superman”) and a kick ass lady named Vanessa Kirby. The bad guy introduces himself as “Bad Guy”. He has a plan to spread a super-virus that will wipe out most of the world in an attempt to weed out the weak and kickstart human evolution. One of the better scenes involves a scientist explaining a real easy way to stop the plot (kill one person who is the room) and a really really hard way to stop the plot (infiltrate the bad guys lair in the middle of an army base in a completely different country within 12 hours). The World is at stake. The first option is not seriously considered. Another great scene involves a car mechanic trying to repair a complex biological contraption with no training and no special equipment while Hobbs and Shaw yell at him to hurry up. Amazingly, the yelling helps and the car mechanic gets the contraption to work. Shameless. During the climatic battle, our guys Hobbs and Shaw realize that the way to beat the bad guy is to work together as a team. Shameless, shameless, shameless.

The most enjoyably shameless part of these movies is the Fast & Furious physics. Cars can’t do this shit. You can’t shoot people from the cab of a jeep while its doing a barrel roll, but there it is up on the screen proving your sense of reality and logic wrong. The director of the movie is David Leitch, who is more of a stunt coordinator that has been converted into a director. His one previous movie  was the very good Deadpool 2. You can tell because he fills out the supporting cast with actors from that movie: see Eddie Marsan, Ryan Reynolds, and Rob Delaney. I’m beginning to like the idea of stunt coordinators becoming directors. The other good movie this year that was directed by a stunt coordinator was John Wick 3. The fight scenes were of a higher caliber in John Wick 3, however, this movie however is funnier. The jokes are a bit clunky in the first half of the movie, but as everyone settles in, they start coming out smoother. Then Kevin Hart shows up and is hilarious for about forty seconds.

Let me give you a test: The movie relocates to Samoa for its third act for no particular story reason. The only conceivable reason it happens is to provide an excuse to see Dwayne Johnson dress in traditional Samoan warrior club and have a traditional Samoan brawl with a traditional Samoan warrior club. Before the climatic battle, The Rock stands on a bluff and with a totally straight face states, “I can’t believe this is where we’re going to save The World.” If that makes you chuckle, I’ve got a direct commercial flight from Moscow to Samoa to sell you.