jason statham

Talking Movies: Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

Dr. K1 Comment
Talking Movies
Hobbs&ShawLogo

Released: August 2019
Director: David Leitch
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Budget: $200 million
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, and Vanessa Kirby

Plot:
Spinning out of the Fast and the Furious (Various, 2001 to present) franchise, DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) is forced to team up with mercenary Deckard Shaw (Statham) when rogue MI6 agent-turned-cyborg Brixton Lore (Elba) leads a terrorist organisation in trying to acquire a potentially world-ending virus.

Background:
The Fast and the Furious franchise is a funny beast; what started as a vague remake of Point Break (Bigelow, 1991), but with cars rather than surfboards, became an over-the-top heist franchise and, finally, a pseudo-superhero series where its invincible characters can pretty much solve any problem with a bunch of cool cars, the concept of family, and being big, unapologetic alpha males. Seriously, this franchise taught me that the best way to solve any issue is to change gear or hit the nitrous and I am constantly amused at how the franchise has turned the traditional action genre on its head. Like, normally in action moves, you’ll get quick cuts or shots of guys reloaded or throwing punches but, in the Fast and the Furious movies, these are replaced with sudden and dramatic gear changes. Anyway, ever since the franchise returned to prominence with Fast & Furious (Lin, 2009), the films have done nothing but make money…shit-loads of money! With Dwayne Johnson joining the franchise in Fast & Furious 5 (ibid, 2011), the producers have finally decided to capitalise on his charisma, box office appeal, popularity, and money-making ability by throwing him together with Jason Statham as two guys who can’t stand each other and are forced to work together in a big, over-the-top, car-centric, superpowered version of Tango & Cash (Konchalovsky, 1989).

The Review:
Right off the bat, Hobbs & Shaw introduces us to Brixton, a man who unapologetically describes himself as the “bad guy”; Brixton is decked out in a bulletproof uniform, has cybernetic implants, and is, for all intents and purposes, “Black Superman”. His goal is to acquire a “programmable virus” that will wipe out the weakest of the human race so that only the strongest and the fittest can survive but, when MI6 agent Hattie Shaw (Kirby) injects herself with the virus and evades him, Brixton uses the vast resources of his shady organisation, Eteon, to frame Hattie, forcing the CIA to draft in Hobbs and Shaw to track her down, acquire the virus, and stop Brixton.

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Hobbs and Shaw must put aside their egos to battle Brixton.

Hobbs and Shaw are presented as being polar opposites; Hobbs is a massive mountain of a man who uses his brute strength to get results while Shaw is more about finesse and subtlety. Not only that, their personalities clash in the wildest of ways; despite working together and seemingly burying the hatchet in Fast & Furious 8 (Gray, 2017), Hobbs and Shaw still cannot stand one another and are always a razor’s edge from getting into a fist fight, making for some truly amusing verbal exchanges and insults shared between the two. Hobbs & Shaw is a non-stop thrill ride of a movie; when there aren’t big fight sequences, there’s an over-the-top car chase; when those two things aren’t on screen, there might be a fire fight or, when all else fails, the movie falls back on the chemistry and the banter between Hobbs and Shaw, which could honestly carry the entire movie without the action sequences. I went into this fully expecting a comically over-the-top action movie and I wasn’t disappointed; I swear one day this franchise will end up in space, so “Black Superman” isn’t too much of a stretch and it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the ride once Hobbs and Shaw get behind the wheels of their cars and start pulling off crazy stunts, jumps, and actions that would obviously never work in the “real world” but the real world sucks and is boring so why would you want to see that anyway?

The Nitty-Gritty:
Not much to spoil here, really; there’s fights, cars, and guns. Hattie, as you may have guessed from her name, is Shaw’s estranged sister and a big part of the movie is dedicated to revealing that Shaw was setup by Brixton back when they worked together in MI6, which helps to give his previously malevolent character some humanity. It’s never really revealed exactly what Eteon did to improve Brixton; he ahs a mechanical spine and some cybernetic implants in his eyes but there’s no real specifics behind his superhuman status. Eteon is headed up by an unseen, disembodied, digitally-altered voice, however, who hints to a past with Hobbs and is clearly being setup for future movies, which may detail more about what Eteon is about.

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Idris Elba clearly relishes being “Black Superman”.

Hobbs also gets a character arc where he is forced to return to his home in Samoa and his estranged family when Hobbs and Shaw are framed by Eteon, leading to the deepest exploration of Johnson’s family heritage than we’ve ever seen on film before. His real-life cousin, Roman Reigns, even pops up as Hobbs’ brother; however, despite this role being promoted as Reigns’ big break into Hollywood, he doesn’t have a single line, doesn’t really do anything except hit a Spear and fight alongside Hobbs and his brothers, and the role is little more than a cameo as Hobbs is primarily focused on repairing his relationship with his brother, Jonah (Cliff Curtis). Speaking of cameos, Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, and Kevin Hart all pop up, to varying degrees of success. Mirren, as Shaw’s mother, is classically understated and never wears out here welcome but Reynolds appears to have been drafted in as Kurt Russell wasn’t available to reprise his role as Mr. Nobody and Hart is clearly there as he’s the Rock’s buddy. Both guys are onscreen, seemingly ad-libbing, for a long time, with Hart’s cameo especially being a glaring addition that left me itching for the scene to move on and get back to the action.

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The Summary:
Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is a great time; sometimes, it’s good to just go to the movies, switch your brain off, and enjoy an alpha male odd-couple begrudgingly learning to tolerate each other and work together towards a greater good. The film has some fantastic dialogue between the two, some big action sequences, and walks the line between the ridiculous and the fantastic with such unapologetic glee that it can’t help but be a really enjoyable experience.

My Rating:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Pretty Good

Talking Movies: The Meg

Dr. K1 Comment
Talking Movies
TheMegLogo

Over forty years ago, Steven Spielberg made cinemagoers everywhere afraid to enter the ocean and changed the face of cinema with Jaws (ibid, 1975), to this day the quintessential tale of a giant shark terrorising water-dwellers. Since then, many films have attempted to recapture that magic, including Jaws’ lacklustre sequels, but, somewhere along the way, the concept of the giant shark movie fell into the dredges of direct-to-DVD and made-for-television releases. Relegated to B-movie status, the argument can be made that cinema has not seen a shark movie with a significant budget since the underrated Deep Blue Sea (Harlin, 1999). Director Jon Turteltaub seeks to correct that with The Meg; like Jaws, The Meg is also a loose adaptation of a book, in this case Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror (Alten, 1997), though it brings one crucial difference to the table: The Meg concerns a gigantic prehistoric shark hidden from the outside world for centuries rather than a giant great white.

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Next to the shark, the biggest star of this movie.

The Meg stars Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor (these two things, the casting of Statham and his character’s name (“Jonas”), combined with the concept of a seventy-five-foot shark should tell you everything you need to know about this movie), who encountered the titular megalodon during a deep-sea rescue mission. Discredited by his peers, despite seven eleven people, he has divorced from his wife, Lori (Jessica McNamee), and descended into a drunken stupor. All that changes, however, after a group of deep-sea divers, led by Lori, breach the Mariana Trench and discover a previously hidden world of new species. Working from billionaire Jack Morris’ (Rainn Wilson) underwater research facility, Mana One, Lori and her fellow scientists are immediately attacked by a megalodon and trapped deeper than anyone has ever gone before. Against the objections of Doctor Heller (Robert Taylor), who previously judged Jonas to be suffering from pressure-induced psychosis, James “Mac” Mackreides (Cliff Curtis) knows that Jonas is the only man qualified to lead a rescue mission and, alongside Doctor Minway Zhang (Winston Chao), manages to recruit Jonas.

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The megalodon quickly becomes the queen of the sea.

Despite the objections of many of the Mana One staff, Jones manages to rescue Lori and her associate, the Wall (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), when Toshi (Masi Oka) sacrifices himself to distract the megalodon. Back on Mana One, Jonas forges connections with Suyin Zhang (Li Bingbing) and her daughter, Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai), but, when Morris’ claims to have drafted in the army to destroy the megalodon, finds himself having to contend with the reality of a giant prehistoric shark loose in the waters. First of all, what a great time this is for giant monster movies; Rampage (Peyton, 2018) and Pacific Rim Uprising (DeKNight, 2018) were both serviceable efforts this year alone and we still have Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Dougherty, 2019) to come next year! The important thing to remember about movies like The Meg is that they are designed to be mindless fun and, in that regard, The Meg succeeds.

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This isn’t your father’s giant shark movie!

Put aside any allusions that this is anything like Jaws; such comparisons are meaningless and unfair. In fact, the only real similarity between the two is that the reveal of the megalodon is a slow build (there are some perhaps unavoidable other parallels, though, such as the hunt out to sea to kill the shark and its attack upon swimmers). Once the megalodon rises from the Trench, though, all bets are off and we get to see the monstrous creature in all its glory.

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No complaints about casting here.

A B-movie with a budget, this film is bolstered by Statham’s natural charisma; he is always so cool and composed and relatable that it is impossible to not like him and he is at his quasi-superhuman best, leaping head-first into what appear to be impossible situations and emerging unscathed by the skin of his teeth. The rest of the cast is pretty decent, too. All of the characters may be a bit one-note (there’s the billionaire, the moody Goth chick, the loudmouth comic relief, etc) but they’re fun and play their roles well even when they’re just there to be eaten. The best parts involving the megalodon might be featured in the trailer, but that doesn’t detract from the rest of the film. In the end, The Meg is definitely a film for you to switch your brain off to and just enjoy. The one thing I always hate about shark movies is how they’re constantly compared to Jaws (and, yes, I am aware that I did that as well) but you’ve got to let that go because no film is going to live up to that hype and times have changed. Not being Jaws doesn’t stop The Meg being a decent giant monster film or a fun time at the cinema, so get any other ideas out of your head and just have fun with the idea of Jason Statham kicking a giant monster shark in the nose.

My Rating:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Pretty Good

Recommended: Fans of giant monster movies and Jason Statham should be well satisfied but I’d also say anyone up for a good time would enjoy this, too.
Best moment: Obviously the megalodon’s attack on the swimmers from the trailer is a great scene that I hope gets extended and uncut on DVD, but there’s a great moment involving a shark cage too.
Worst moment: There are times when the movie is unnecessarily slow, as though it was playing things a bit too safe or straight, especially in the first quarter or so before things really pick up.