Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Directed by David Leitch
Ever since US Diplomatic Security Service Agent Hobbs and lawless outcast Shaw first faced off, they just have traded smack talk and body blows. But when cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist Brixton's ruthless actions threaten the future of humanity, they join forces to defeat him.
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What critics say influenced Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
It’s, as you have guessed, a little Thanos, a little Terminator, with action scenes reminiscent of Mission Impossible’s, so much so you keep expecting Tom Cruise to pop up at every turn.
Despite those car chases — and a particularly “Fast and Furious” one near the end – the movie combines the type of high-tech spy stuff we might see in Bond or “Mission: Impossible” with a straight-up buddy action comedy.
Of all the plots from Mission Impossible movies to rip off, Hobbs & Shaw for some reason decides to borrow the premise of the unanimously agreed upon worst entry, MI2.
The sequence is somewhat reminiscent of Mission Impossible, reliant on slow-mo frames, yet retains the Fast and Furious style editing: close-ups of car parts: tires and rims, engines, and steering wheels, made more enlivening by a mounted backseat angle masquerading as a near-dashboard shot.
In a post-superhero summer with no new Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movie — yet hilariously cribbing almost the same plot as M:I-2 — it was only a matter of time before this pair of broad-shouldered box office beefcakes teamed up.
There’s a very Tango & Cash vibe going on where the two beefed up super agents clash and spout insults at each other throughout, which is of course a continuation of their dynamic together in the 8th Fast/Furious movie and the kernel of the idea for this film.
Reminding me a great deal of 1989’s Sylvester Stallone/Kurt Russell cartoonish (if still slightly watchable) showcase Tango & Cash as well as director Stephen Sommer’s 2004 abomination Van Helsing, this is as annoyingly bludgeoning a major Hollywood spectacle as any I can recollect in ages.
(CNN) "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw" is an awfully long-winded title for a movie with roughly the same plot as the 1989 squabbling buddy vehicle "Tango & Cash," only with bigger -- well, pretty much everything -- and better special effects.
It’s a mismatched buddy picture aspiring to the spirit of 1980s cable staples like “48 Hrs.” or “Tango & Cash” in which the leads spend as much time busting each other’s balls as they spend breaking bad-guys’ heads.
Two things that this Tango & Cash clone has in spades.
Fans of buddy action flicks of the 80s and 90s, such as "Lethal Weapon," "Tango & Cash," "48 Hrs." and "Midnight Run" will be right at home here.
Having cut his teeth in the action genre already with a co-direction stint on John Wick , before moving on his own with Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 , director David Leitch is perfectly matched to Hobbs & Shaw ‘s action excess, capturing the vibe of the previous Fast films whilst also giving it its own identity.
And director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) nicely frames those gags with split screens and parallel-edited fight scenes where Hobbs and Shaw each try to achieve different goals at the same time.
Director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) has a good grip on combining outrageous action with good ol’ buddy comedy, and he understands that the supercharged engine of the Fast & Furious movies has always purred with the warm, steady hum of another f-word, family.
The director, David Leitch, has impressively managed to combine everything we love from his previous films into one, crowd-pleasing package: the exciting fighting of John Wick, the plotting of Atomic Blonde, the world-building of both those films, and finally the effortless charm of Deadpool 2. Leitch also understands the differences and tensions between its two action leads and what they represent.
That's not a bad thing — Kirby has charisma for days — but her sleeker, quieter style recalls better action movies, like Leitch's own Atomic Blonde, or Statham's old Transporter series.
There’s a part of filmmaker David Leitch’s talent that helped him direct the superbly styled, ultra-violent and very kinetic Atomic Blonde.
Its storyline closely parallels “ Mission: Impossible II ,” and in the last decade and with more those films have leaned into intense pseudo-realistic stunts, where Hobbs and Shaw are something more closely akin to “ Moonraker .”
In a post-superhero summer with no new Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movie — yet hilariously cribbing almost the same plot as M:I-2 — it was only a matter of time before this pair of broad-shouldered box office beefcakes teamed up.
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(There are also references to The Terminator, The Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones, where the series ending is spoiled.)
While someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger had The Terminator series and Sylvester Stallone had the Rambo and Rocky franchises, Johnson hasn’t come across his defining moment yet.
“We’re being chased by The Terminator!”
I love Idris Elba, but when did the "Fast and the Furious" become "The Terminator"?
Leitch at least knows how to borrow from the best: Shamelessly cribbing from Mad Max: Fury Road in an attack-helicopter-versus-hot-rod chase, he even goes so far as to copy George Miller’s frenzied dolly-ins and close-ups.
His high-speed chase sequences owe something to George Miller’s pace-setting Mad Max: Fury Road, aiming for the thrill of rapid cutting with no loss of clarity.
I thought that in a post-Mad Max: Fury Road and The Raid world, we were finally starting to appreciate stunt performers enough to use them.
The intervening four years have borne witness to a veritable golden age: while Furious 7 was still in theaters, it had to share space with the epochal Mad Max: Fury Road , and in the years since, we've had Mission: Impossibles Rogue Nation and Fallout , John Wick: Chapter 2 , John Wick: Chapter 3 , Atomic Blonde , and that's literally just what came to mind without even pausing to think about other examples, or grappling whether the little fact that they're animated means that Incredibles 2 and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse don't "count".
The story, written by the franchise’s writers Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, borrows from various spy films, such as Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997, Mission: Impossible 2, 2000, and Spectre, 2015.
Having cut his teeth in the action genre already with a co-direction stint on John Wick , before moving on his own with Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 , director David Leitch is perfectly matched to Hobbs & Shaw ‘s action excess, capturing the vibe of the previous Fast films whilst also giving it its own identity.
And director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) nicely frames those gags with split screens and parallel-edited fight scenes where Hobbs and Shaw each try to achieve different goals at the same time.
Director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) has a good grip on combining outrageous action with good ol’ buddy comedy, and he understands that the supercharged engine of the Fast & Furious movies has always purred with the warm, steady hum of another f-word, family.
David Leitch, director of John Wick and Deadpool 2 , channels the latter’s sensibilities to orchestrate a-class action nonsense (as well as pulling a few strings for some… interesting… cameos).
The director, David Leitch, has impressively managed to combine everything we love from his previous films into one, crowd-pleasing package: the exciting fighting of John Wick, the plotting of Atomic Blonde, the world-building of both those films, and finally the effortless charm of Deadpool 2. Leitch also understands the differences and tensions between its two action leads and what they represent.
His vehicular carnage from Deadpool 2 matches up nicely with what I can only assume are millions of dollars’ worth of Hobbs & Shaw auto-insurance claims.
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The Fate of the Furious saw Jason Statham decimate a plane’s worth of enemies à la Hard Boiled and The Rock push a torpedo away with his barehands; their cinematic match-up as a duo was inevitable.
In case you’ve lost count, there’ve been eight, starting with The Fast and the Furious back in 2001.
In 2001 we were introduced to Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel, xXx), Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker, Running Scared) and a host of other colorful characters in Universal Pictures' The Fast and The Furious.
If you removed the “Fast & Furious Presents” label from Hobbs & Shaw before showing the film to a person who had only seen 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, there’s a good chance they would never suspect the two were connected.
Once upon a time, in the summer of 2001, a young and only moderately swole Vin Diesel appeared in The Fast and the Furious as Dominic Toretto, an L.A. ex-con who organized drag races, stole DVD players off the backs of trucks, and got in trouble with the local law.
And it is instructive to consider how a story that technically began 18 years ago in 2001’s “The Fast and the Furious,” about an undercover LAPD officer trying to find the identities of a group of car-hijackers, has wrought this film, where a former British Special Forces assassin and an American federal agent must team up to save the world from a eugenicist MI6 agent who has gone rogue.