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.
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.
As we already knew from the movies, you can outrun an
explosion, provided it happens in slo-mo. Now from “The Fate of the Furious,”
the franchise that started out about illegal street racers and somehow morphed
into full James Bond-esque international intrigue and action set pieces, we
learn you can block an explosion simply by parking a car in front of it.
It’s true -- the flames won’t go above, below or around the
vehicle at all! Thanks, Furious!
I know, I know; nitpicking the “Fast and the Furious”
franchise, now in its astonishing eighth iteration, is like criticizing the
dancing bear’s form. People pay to see it because it does what it does, not
because it’s particularly good at it or whether the whole enterprise makes a
lick of sense.
The thing is, people got hooked on these movies because they
combined hot rods, bulging muscles, macho preening, hoochie mamas and lots of
hard-throttle racing. Most of that has gone by the wayside in “Fate.” Oh, there
are a few cool cars, and neither Vin Diesel nor Dwayne Johnson seem to own any
shirts that include sleeves.
But at this point the Furious movies are big, messy,
sprawling orgies of pomposity and ridiculousness. It’s all about Russian
separatists and nuclear codes and elite cyber hackers and no-name American spy
agencies. There are eight gazillion characters, and apparently we’re supposed
to be able to remember some sideshow guys from four movies ago.
When last we left Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his “family”
of driver/robbers, they’d finally found some peace after pulling off one last
big job. We learn they’ve been staying in Havana, which in this depiction is a
true socialist paradise of cruising cars and women with cheeks hanging out of
their skirts.
Dom gets a visit from Cipher, a computer hacker and
criminal mastermind, played with hollow eyes and a taunting smirk by Charlize Theron.
She shows him an image on her phone, and as a result he turns his back on his
crew and becomes her mercenary in some very big heists against the Russian
military. His actions are so bewildering, his friends keep wondering aloud:
“Has Dominic Toretto finally gone rogue?”
Hint: Dominic Toretto has not gone rogue.
You may remember the other players: Michelle Rodriguez is
Letty, Dom’s fiery lady love, now wife; Johnson is Luke Hobbs, a special ops
badass who used to chase Dom & Co. but now allies with them; Tyrese Gibson
is Roman, the wisecracking, cowardly one; Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is Tej, the
brainy tech expert; Nathalie Emmanuel is Ramsey, a hacktivist who created some
spying software called God’s Eye in the last movie and now fends off lame
sexual innuendo from Roman and Tej.
Jason Statham returns as Shaw, a bad guy for at least one
other movie, maybe two. (I really can’t remember.) Now he and Hobbs are in jail
together for about a minute and a half, then they’re forced to team up against
Cipher. They keep threatening to have a fistfullicious throwdown when their temporary alliance
is ended; it gives us something to look forward to.
Kurt Russell shows up as the helpful spy guy pulling some
strings, and Scott Eastwood is his dorky young apprentice who eventually wises
up. I get the sense Eastwood is being groomed to assume the role of Bland
Straitlaced White Guy vacated by Paul Walker.
The movie, directed by F. Gary Gray from a script by Chris
Morgan, is big, loud and dumb, but perhaps not big and loud enough for its own good.
There’s an astonishing amount of jabbering and people tapping away furious on
computer keyboards. This is one of those movies where virtually every object in
the world can be controlled by computers, including an army of self-driving
cars and even a nuclear submarine.
(Quibble: If you leave the hatch of a sub open, as the
characters clearly do, it tends to flood when it submerges. OK, I’ll stop.)
There was one clever and funny bit where Shaw fights a bunch
of people on a plane while carrying a very important object, about which I’ll
say no more. It’s basically the movie’s MacGuffin, but cuter.
“The Fate of the Furious” is a transcendentally silly movie,
rock-headed and testosterone-fueled, but one not without its charms. The car stunts are fun, the bad guys are
hiss-able, and even the hyper-masculine peacocking gets so silly the guys start
laughing at each other in between boasts and threats.
I wish the thing was 40 minutes shorter. Come to think of
it, I wish they’d stopped making these two or three movies ago. But I hear two
more are coming, whether we like it or not. Just pay your money and clap for
the bear.
"Spy" is a one-joke movie, but it's a pretty decent joke. Schlubby, timid Susan is a CIA drone who finally gets a chance to go out in the field, and to the surprise of everyone she's a total badass -- if a frequently clumsy one.
Because this is a comedy, so thar be pratfalls galore.
Given that description, you know Melissa McCarthy is the star. She's come on like a tornado in just a few short years to become one of Hollywood's most consistently popular stars. Even last year's limp "Tammy" made bank.
McCarthy just has that natural ability to make audiences like her, even when her character is behaving over the top. We sense a vulnerability beneath the bombast. She's an everygal who projects intelligence and the endearing awkwardness of someone who didn't get any of the big breaks in life.
The woman is a pip.
Here she's reunited with writer/director Paul Feig, who made her a star in "Bridesmaids" and followed it up by pairing McCarthy up with Sandra Bullock in "The Heat." This time she's got a couple of suave, macho male co-stars, though they're supporting parts and she's clearly the main show.
Jude Law plays Bradley Fine, a classic debonair 007 type who can mow through a whole building of bad guys on his own. Of course, he's got Susan in his head to help -- literally. She monitors him from base, sees and hears what he does, and uses a bunch of impressive spy gizmos to give Fine a leg up.
But when Fine goes missing in the field, presumed dead, Susan steps forward to keep up the pursuit of their quarry: Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), an icy Bulgarian who has stolen a small nuclear device and is looking to sell it to terrorists. Susan's job is to track Rayna and report back, but of course she soon jumps into the muck.
There's pushback, of course, from the agency. The boss (Allison Janney) isn't sure Susan has the right stuff. And Jason Statham turns up, essentially playing Jason Statham. He's a brash agent who keeps warning Susan that she's in danger of screwing up the mission -- usually right before he screws up the mission.
The movie is fitfully entertaining. There are several terrific laugh-out-loud moments. One bit, where Susan makes her first kill and then... overreacts to it is a great rolling joke that just keeps building.
And there are a number of good throwaway gags. Statham's character wants to know why he can't just jump into "the 'Face/Off' machine" to change his identity, and has to be reminded it's not a real thing. And Susan keeps getting stuck with lame secret identities, divorced cat ladies and such, which is mostly an excuse for McCarthy to dress up in fright wigs and goofy outfits.
I was also glad to see that, unlike "Tammy," there isn't a raft of fat jokes. Though the movie certainly uses McCarthy's size to comic effect, it's more about a dowdy woman discovering she can move like a ninja when her dander is up.
It's a fun movie, but there are too many dull stretches, especially in the second half. There are even some fairly pulse-pounding action sequences, and for awhile it seems like "Spy" forgets that it's a spoof.
"Furious 7" features a lot of great stunts and a great deal of silliness. This franchise started out 14 years ago about a bunch of punk twentysomething street racers, and by now it's morphed into a James Bond clan in which everybody does martial arts, spy infiltrations and super stunts in addition to being expert wheel men (and women).
You pretty much know what you're getting with any of the "Furious" flicks: aerobatic car stunts, smashmouth fights, explosions galore, booties shaken, muscles engorged, exotic locales and lots of quips. The first 20 minutes or so features very little action, with main star Vin Diesel repeatedly threatening the camera, vaguely: "They're gonna pay for their mistakes... big time."
That's not actually what he says, but it could be. One of the main failings of these movies is that the dialogue often sounds like it was written by a pair of 15-year-olds who were locked in a vault with a bunch of video games and no contact with other humans.
(Chris Morgan, who penned the first, fifth and sixth movies, is officially given credit.)
Justin Lin, who directed the last four films in the series, is replaced by horror filmmaker James Wan. He adds a few new flourishes of his own, such as rotating the camera to follow the trajectory of an actor spinning through the air during a fight or crash, and then flogs them like a deceased equine.
Still, it's hard to deny that many of the chase scenes in the latter half are truly thrilling. The best are a multi-car road duel on a twisty mountain road, and a super-valuable sports car being jumped from one high-rise skyscraper to another... and another.
Dwayne Johnson, as supercop Hobbs, is actually sidelined for most of the movie after sustaining serious injuries during an early tussle, which is notable for a couple of reasons. First, we don't get to enjoy Johnson and Diesel engaging in another pointless battle of behemoths. Second, this is virtually the only time a character gets more than a scratch during the entire flick, despite an unrelenting barrage of bullets, shrapnel, kicks, punches and sudden g-force trauma.
The plot is an incomprehensible muddle of MacGuffins, red herrings, come-and-go villains and set pieces. Our travels take us from Los Angeles to London, Abu Dhabi, the Caucuses, the Dominican Republic and more.
Ostensibly it's about catching Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of the bad guy from the last movie. He's a British black ops chap who wants revenge, so he starts tracking down the "family" members of Dom Toretto (Diesel), leader of the crew. Dom doesn't believe in playing defense, so soon they're chasing the guy chasing them.
Somehow this morphs into the search for an international hacker named Ramsey, who has created a program called the God's Eye, which uses cell phones, security cameras and virtually every electronic device to track anyone, anywhere.
(You may recall this is the same thing Batman used during the finale of "The Dark Knight"; it was goofy then, and it's still goofy now.)
Other familiar characters include Paul Walker as cop-turned-wingman Brian; Michelle Rodriguez as Dom's squeeze Letty, still struggling with amnesia after returning from the dead; Roman (Tyrese Gibson), ladies' man and comic relief; and Tej (Ludacris), computer expert and Roman tamer.
(Walker's death mid-production is handled by using CGI to paste his face on other actors' bodies; if you're not looking for it, you probably won't even notice. He also receives a send-off at the end that's genuinely touching.)
Joining the fray are Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), head of a vague American government arm that wants God's Eye, and Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou), an African crime lord who desires it, too. Things build up to a spectacular showdown in L.A. with all parties taking part in a very destructive fracas.
"Furious 7" is not the sort of movie you're supposed to spend more than a few seconds thinking about, because if you do it all falls apart like sand. (For instance, how does the God's Eye track Shaw when he drives through a barren desert? Are the geckos rocking Samsungs?)
You're invited to just sit back, drink in the crazy action scenes and sneering attitude, and cheer. There are plenty of moments worth a huzzah, but many others that earn their derision.
A second-rate rip-off of "Toy Story" mixed with a dose of Shakespeare, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is a British animated film that is meant to be enjoyed by the very youngest audience, and merely tolerated by their parents.
The set-up is that the star-crossed lovers, and all of their kin, are garden gnomes made of clay. They go about their business in the split backyard of an English duplex, tending their gardens and whatnot. When humans come around, though, they revert to their familiar (and tasteless) statuesque forms.
Gnomeo (voice by James McAvoy) is the hell-raising son of the matron of the Blue gnomes, while sweet Juliet (Emily Blunt) is royalty of their arch-enemy Reds. When they fall in love, it sets up a war between the clans, with the unfortunate ones ending up in a pile of smashed bits.
Directed by Kelly Asbury ("Shrek 2"), "Gnomeo & Juliet" has some fairly clever ideas, but always chooses the lowest common denominator when it comes to humor and characterization. The movie is pitched at about a pre-kindergarten level, and anyone more than a few years above that will find themselves frequently bored.
In this terrific age of animation in which we find ourselves, this film just doesn't measure up.
Extras are a bit sparse in the DVD version, and don't substantially improve even if you upgrade to Blu-ray.
The DVD has a "Crocodile Rock" music video, and featuettes with Ashley Jensen (who plays the princess' frog sidekick) and Elton John. That's it.
If you choose the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack (available in both 3D and regular versions), you get all the DVD stuff and several deleted or alternate scenes, including two alternate endings. There's also a "Fawn of Darkness" featurette.
Tolerable but forgettable, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is a halfway clever idea executed with minimal effort and ingenuity. In its (allegedly) humorous take on the classic play about star-crossed lovers, the film continuously reaches for the lowest-hanging fruit -- in its jokes, in its animation style and its brazen, narrow appeal to tykes.
Right from the start we're instructed that this is a movie with little patience for complexity. A gnome begins reading the introduction of "Romeo and Juliet," but is banished from the stage for his "long and boring prologue."
The hook is that the entire cast is gnomes -- not the mythical creatures, but garden gnomes. Cutesy to some and horrifying to others, these little ceramic cherub-cheeked critters are like a cross between hobbits and dwarves.
(They also, now that I think about it, bear a startling resemblance to Smurfs, who are getting their own movie soon.)
Not even bothering to hide how much they've lifted from "Toy Story," the gnomes come alive only when humans are not around, but suddenly revert to their statuesque forms if interrupted in their doings.
Interestingly, though they seem to have all the flesh-and-blood urges of people, they're still made of clay or whatever, and shatter if they fall or are struck. All of the older gnomes are chipped and faded, and even young rascal Gnomeo (voice by James McAvoy) has a scratched eyebrow and cheek from getting into so many (literal) scrapes.
The warring clans are the Red and Blue gnomes, marked by their pointed hats and/or clothing, who belong to elaborate gardens nestled side-by-side in a British duplex owned by neighbors who despise each other. (Their addresses are "2B" and a crossed-out "2B," in one of a few funny throwaway puns.)
The gnomes carry on that hostility, led by Lord Redbrick (Michael Caine) and Lady Bluebury (Maggie Smith). Various contests and sorties into enemy territory keep things going, with lawn mower racing being a big thing, and vandalizing the others' flowers and cheesy garden decorations.
Gnomeo, the son of Bluebury, falls for Juliet (Emily Blunt), Redbrick's only child, but of course their love is doomed. Eventually, their romance will overpower the hatred between the Reds and the Blues. I don't think I'm giving away much by saying that this ending is decidedly less tragic -- and G-rated -- than the play.
A few of the supporting characters breathe a little life into the stale proceedings. Juliet has a right-hand-woman, Nanette (Ashley Jensen), a frog statue who dispenses water and flighty advice. Featherstone (Jim Cummings) is an abandoned plastic pink flamingo, who's a bit dazed after 20 years of solitude but has a poignant story to tell.
Director Kelly Asbury ("Shrek 2") seems content to pitch things at about kindergarten level, with a sparse layering of in-jokes to keep parents minimally involved. Elton John is an executive producer, and provides some of his classic songs, plus a few new ones.
"Gnomeo & Juliet" sets some kind of notorious new record for screenwriting-by-committee, with no less than nine people receiving a writing credit -- 10, if you throw in Bill Shakespeare.
If you took movies like "The American" or "Taken" -- lean, efficient thrillers about hit men struggling with their violent histories -- and stripped them of any intellectual pretense, you'd have "The Mechanic."
Credit this new action flick from stolid B-list leading man Jason Statham ("The Transporter," "Crank") and director Simon West ("Con Air") with being self-aware. It doesn't try to dazzle with deep meditations on aging assassins filled with regret. This is a movie devoted to celebrating mayhem, which it does with straightforward flair.
Statham plays Arthur Bishop, a veteran "mechanic" or hit man. He works for a shadowy group that simply calls itself "The Company," but we don't get the sense it's a governmental agency hunting bad guys. Bishop receives a file from time to time, which names a target he's to take out.
Sometimes the kill is supposed to be big and bloody, to send a message to the world. Other times, Bishop is expected to carry out his mission without anyone knowing he was ever there.
Much of the film's enjoyment comes from watching Bishop come up with all sorts of ingenious ways to execute his victims. An opening sequence involving a Columbian drug lord surrounded by a veritable army of gun-toting guards comes down to an afternoon swim and a wristwatch.
Things go south when Bishop receives his new assignment, and it's to take out his own handler, a wheelchair-bound old-timer named McKenna (Donald Sutherland). The boss (a slithery Tony Goldwyn) claims McKenna was taking bribes and set up another team of assassins, who all perished. Since Bishop is his friend, they figure he'll have the best chance of slaying McKenna with no mess.
This is the film's best section, as the two men slowly gain a trust that Bishop knows will eventually be punctured when Steve learns that his mentor was the one who killed his father. Steve is played by Ben Foster, who lends his character a skeevy but soulful presence.
Foster's made something of a career stealing scenes as a sidekick to bigger stars -- "3:10 to Yuma," "The Messenger" -- and does so again here.
The final act of the movie is a paint-by-numbers affair in which Bishop and Steve team up to annihilate the organization they'd been working for. Still, the action scenes are crisp and engaging -- especially a rooftop shootout that ends in a sudden drop.
The screenplay is by Richard Wenk and Lewis John Carlino, who also wrote the 1972 original film starring Charles Bronson upon which this is based.
"The Mechanic" scores because it knows what it is and isn't -- it thrives not on brainpower, but the horsepower of bloody havoc.
Imagine if you had a pair of 14-year-old boys who had never gone to school, never read a book, and they just stayed inside and watched TV and played video games, and that was all they knew of the world. "Crank 2: High Voltage" is the movie they would make.
This isn't to say that writing/directing duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who launched their careers with the first "Crank," are developmentally stunted individuals. They just make movies for people who are.
Indeed, in wading through the healthy set of extras that come with the "Crank 2" special-edition DVD, Neveldine/Taylor (as they bill themselves) come across as a wise-cracking, hip and smart duo who are fully aware that they're making preposterous action flicks for the attention deficit disordered.
At one point in the feature-length commentary track, they state unequivocally that one of their major plot points -- having to do with rubbing bodies together to create friction -- is complete bunk. "If you really believed this, then thanks for your $10," one of them says.
Hey, when it comes to exploitation filmmaking, at least they're honest -- and entertaining. Now, you might think that the fact that grim hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) died at the end of the first "Crank" might be an impediment to a sequel. But that's an easy fix -- some Chinese mobsters snatch his body from where it fell out of a helicopter, take out his heart and stick in an artificial one.
Like the first movie, Chev needs regular jolts of electricity to keep his fake ticker going, so he's forever sticking his finger in electrical outlets, grabbing hold of transformers or getting zapped by jumper cables attached to his nipple and tongue.
His adversaries are an endless array of racist portrayals of minorities who fall down with the ease of video game bogeymen.
In addition to the commentary, there's a 50-minute making-of documentary, featurette of continuity errors, theatrical trailer and a digital copy of the film.
