Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

In preparation for seeing this weekend’s bona fide blockbuster, I attempted to watch all eight of the Fast & Furious films that came before it — but I failed myself and my team. I just want to be upfront with you on that matter and, believe me, by the end of this week I will have atoned for this shortcoming.

Luckily for me and everyone else in the world, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw needs no backstory to be enjoyed. It stands alone as an action film in its own right, dedicating two-plus hours for some of the more enjoyable characters — and certainly the most talented actors — in the F&F universe to shine.

Our story follows larger-than-life lawman Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and his nemesis, the mercenary Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), as they’re forced, once again, to work together. This time it’s to track down Shaw’s younger sister, Hattie (Vanessa Kirby, Mission: Impossible — Fallout), an MI6 agent framed for killing her entire team during a retrieval operation while making off with a deadly virus.

It’s there that she encounters our villain, Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). A marvel of science — half man, half robot — he’s out to nab the virus and get this whole global genocide thing started. Mass murder really gets his circuits charged, and those of Eteon, the evil organization that gave Lore his life back — with biomechanical benefits, natch.

The story is incredibly grandiose and plays more like a James Bond narrative than one born out of a series of fuel-injected heist movies. The level of every conceivable element has been ratcheted up from the franchise’s previous films, and the action pops, thanks to stunt-man-turned-director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde; Deadpool 2). Above all, it’s thoroughly entertaining.

I feared a movie with this much hype and status would end up just another boring and brainless actioner that failed due to too many cooks working to win over every focus group along the way. But the producers — which include Johnson and Statham — pulled it off. With wit and heart near its center, Hobbs & Shaw retains one key element from the F&F series as a whole: the importance of family. Vin Diesel’s Dom would be proud.

The true core, of course, is to pull out all the stops. In Luke’s brother’s chop shop, we briefly see a wall filled with posters of ’80s action flicks like Cobra that are obvious nods to the film’s sensibility. (Tango & Cash just went to the top of my list for a much-needed rewatch.) We’ve seen some great movies flash on our screens this summer, but seeing Hobbs lasso a helicopter from the back of a speeding semitruck — now that’s something that will go down in the action movie Hall of Fame.