Video review: "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw"

I didn’t know that a movie franchise could “present” a spinoff, but I’m not sure if anybody would buy a ticket to “Hobbs & Shaw” if they didn’t know it was part of the “Fast & Furious” universe. But it made its pile of money, helped by the branding as well as the star power of Dwayne Johnson and, to a much lesser extent, Jason Statham.

They played late-addition fringe characters next to Vin Diesel and his company of street racers, and here get their own 2-plus-hour movie to smack people around and toss strangle-throated one-liners and occasionally drive cars.

I pretty well loathed “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” because it’s a totally uninteresting garbage movie. The silliness of the title, complete with dueling ampersands, only adds to the reasons to mock it.

Personally I would’ve called the movie “Bald Guys Grunt and Kick People” and be done with it.

Johnson is Hobbs, a U.S. government badass who gets loaned out for all sorts of tough jobs. Statham is Shaw, a criminal turned British MI6 agent who appreciates the finer things in life. They’re thrown together to track down Snowflake, a viral weapon with the potential to kill everyone on Earth.

Idris Elba plays the villain, Brixton Lore, who’s been cybernetically augmented so he’s more than a match for Hobbs and Shaw in hand-to-hand combat, even together. Vanessa Kirby plays Shaw’s sister, a capable agent in her own right who gets in between the two alpha dudes.

There’s a car-chasing-a-helicopter scene that’s not too bad, and later on the gang travels to Hobbs’ homeland of Samoa so they can have an old-school beat-down against the bad guys using medieval weapons and traps.

This is an egregiously dumb, ugly movie. I’m torn between laughing at it and hating it.

Bonus features are in inverse proportion to the quality of the film. There’s a feature-length commentary track with director David Leitch; extended and deleted scenes; an alternate opening; and a baker’s dozen of documentary shorts focusing on various aspects of production, from the star duo pairing to the stunt coordination.

Movie: D-
Extras: B+

Review: "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw"

My gosh, it just keeps going and going, doesn’t it?

Officially the runtime of “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” -- and yes, Hollywood title insanity has reached the point of two ampersands -- is two hours and 15 minutes. But it feels much, much longer. If it’s possible to be bored by a movie in the middle of slo-mo explosions, then here it is.

For my money, the secondary characters of Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) were the least interesting of the F&F universe. The latter is a thief/mercenary turned British MI6 agent, while the former is a badass agent of the Diplomatic Security Service (Google it, it’s a real thing) who is often loaned out to the CIA.

They clashed in some of the earlier movies, or so I’m told, those movies coming so fast and so furious -- and ever further afield from a simple story of street racers -- that they long ago became a blur in my mind.

The gig is they’re brought together on a job, and spend that 135 minutes sneering and snarling at each other, in between a whole lot of beat-downs, the aforementioned explosions and some occasional car chases. Of course, we know they’re going to bond in the end.

Watching this movie play out is an exercise in foregone conclusions. We know there will be some early double-crosses. There will be a beautiful woman they can fight about. There will be a bad guy who somehow seems more than a match for two action-movie heroes. And Dwayne Johnson will wear T-shirts three sizes too small for him, with one obligatory shirtless scene for the two weeks he was doing extreme water weight cutting.

I had high hopes for Johnson once. He was doing quirky comedic roles in “Be Cool” and developing into an interesting performer. Somewhere along the way he got obsessed with being a 1950s-style screen muscleman. His body has become a grossly swollen mass of veins. His star persona is indelibly linked to freakishness now.

I guess it gets box office, but he’s lost something along the way -- realism and relatability, to start.

Vanessa Kirby plays a rogue MI6 agent accused of stealing CT17, aka Snowflake, a deadly virus that could kill everyone on Earth. Actually, she was set up by the evil Eteon corporation, and injected herself with the virus to keep it from falling into their hands. Hobbs and Shaw are brought in to locate her and secure the MacGuffin.

Idris Elba plays Brixton Lore, a cybernetically enhanced villain who actually refers to himself as “the bad guy.” Later on he brags to our boys that he’s “black Superman.” Certainly he seems to have the upper hand in their early encounters.

I usually enjoy Elba in just about anything, but he doesn’t see to be having much fun here. Before every fight he says something cryptic and then his eyes briefly glow amber to let us know he’s Terminator Lite or something.

Director David Leitch piles on the shaky-cam like a 4-year-old put in charge of dispensing the whipped cream. Screenwriters Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce ladle in copious one-liners, our two bald badasses growling in that strangled croak all action heroes seem to use now.

Where will it all end? Are we going to keep getting Fast & Furious movies -- and now spinoffs -- until absolutely everyone in the world objects? As long as people keep buying tickets, or Johnson’s pecs finally fall or fast cars are outlawed.

Review: "Risen"

"Risen" has the unfortunate timing of arriving a couple of weeks after "Hail, Caesar!", the Coen brothers' spoof of old Hollywood mores. George Clooney starred as a pompous stiff of an actor playing a Roman officer who gets swept up in the adoration of the Christ. Then I saw the ads for this movie and thought, "Uh oh..."

At second blush it seems like it has the potential to be an ill-thought attempt to mash up Biblical tales with modern storytelling tropes, with Joseph Fiennes playing a Roman tribune tasked with investigating the disappearance of Jesus' body. It starts off with all the hallmarks of a crime procedural: talking to witnesses, gathering evidence, unexpected twists.

I think I may have even muttered under my breath, "CSI: Judea?"

But after these early hesitations I warmed to the movie. It's well-acted and earnest without becoming cloying. A lot of those Golden Age epics touching on Christian themes could be smarmy as all get out, but director Kevin Reynolds ("Waterworld"), who co-wrote the script with Paul Aiello, keeps things sober and on an even keel.

Fiennes, as ambitious officer Clavius, acts as our clear-eyed observer into the Resurrection mythology. He's skeptical without being an amoral heel who only cares about power -- like Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth), who just wants things tidied up before the Emperor arrives for a visit. He orders Clavius to put an end to the crucifixion and get rid of the bodies.

Except, of course, Jesus' corpse goes missing, and the people start whispering about having risen from the dead. Clavius, along with his impressionable new right-hand man, Lucius (Tom Felton), starts the task of ferreting out the truth. Eventually this forces the rational, pragmatic Roman to start questioning if miracles really are in the offing.

Cliff Curtis plays Jesus (here called Yeshua in Hebrew), whom we first see turned to bloody bits at the end of his ordeal. But this is not "The Passion of the Christ," obsessed with the rending of flesh, but the humanistic tale of what came after. Things build to Clavius being presented with Jesus after the resurrection, alive and smiling, showing his disciples the holes in his hands and side. The Roman decides to follow as they flee to Galilee, his role transformed from conducting interrogations to bearing witness.

The Apostles are depicted as everyday men capable of great faith and doubt, who are ensorcelled by this purported son of the one true God. Stewart Scudamore is a powerful presence as Peter, the oldest and unofficial leader of Jesus' followers. He even gets to show unexpected flashes of humor.

"I haven't every answer," Peter responds to Clavius' many inquiries. "We're astonished, too."

I didn't think I'd like "Risen," but the movie surprised me. It's neither a mushy call to the faithful or a revisionist take laboring to cast doubt on scripture. Rather, it simply depicts how the story of Jesus might have played out in the moment, without that overly dramatic sense of portent that normally invades films about Christianity.

Whether you're a doubter, true believer or indifferent, it's a story of peace and hope worth embracing.