It has finally come to this. At long last, The Fast and the Furious franchise has fully embraced its inner zaniness, leaving the restrictive veneer of realism in the dust. 

With Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw – the first in what appears to be a long line of standalone stories spun off from the franchise’s mainline entries – Universal Pictures’ flagship moneymaker has officially shed the pretense of believability, opting instead to assume the form of a broad comedy jam-packed with action scenes so ludicrous they might as well feature an explicit shot of a massive middle finger that drives home the point: This isn’t your parents’ Fast and Furious.

For the most part, it’s true. It’s difficult to believe that the first ever film in the shockingly durable franchise, which was born into an oblivious world in the early aughts, is a small-scale affair revolving around the theft of DVD players. Fast forward to over a decade later, The Fast and the Furious series has zoomed way past the original filmmakers’ wildest imaginations. 

Gone are the days of neon-lit street races and small-time heists, for they have been eclipsed by the globe-trotting spectacles of spycraft and all-out military warfare, reaching their apex in Hobbs & Shaw.

Should you be curious about whether the old-school franchise has changed so dramatically, look no further than the premise of Hobbs & Shaw: United States federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) teams up with former British Special Forces assassin Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) to extract an apocalyptic virus from the body of the latter’s younger sister, MI6 agent Hattie Shaw. Meanwhile, Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), an augmented superhuman bent on committing a global genocide using the virus, is hot on their trails. 

See, I was not kidding when I said that the days of DVD player heists are in the rearview mirror. These days, it’s all about individuals embroiled in the military-industrial complex stabbing each other in the back and becoming a family because of it. It’s silly, I know. But silly is all we’ve got in the grim blockbuster landscape of 2019. 

Directed by David Leitch of Deadpool 2 and John Wick fame, Hobbs & Shaw is a rather commendable display of technical prowess – a welcome breath of fresh air at a time when cinematic universes operating on dull house-styles reign supreme. Leitch injects his distinctive brand of kinetic vigor into the film’s action scenes, rendering them more visceral than your average cinematic punch-ups and shoot-outs. 

His visual comedy training in Deadpool 2 has paid dividends in Hobbs & Shaw, as moments involving humorous juxtaposition of wordless images are easily the film’s highlights. There’s a split-screen montage early in the film comparing the morning routines of Hobbs and Shaw that effectively establish their traits without ever uttering a syllable. 

The unique stylistic modes in each screen are ingenious extensions of the titular lead protagonists – Hobbs’ cheerful, overtly masculine personality is communicated through the deep orange palette of the California sun, whereas Shaw’s morose self is hilariously shown through the sheer grayness and seemingly never-ending rain of London. It’s clever stuff; Akira Kurosawa would’ve been proud. 

Read also: Idris Elba joins ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ crew

An extended silent sequence later in the film, which involves retinal scanning, is another highlight. Johnson and Statham’s slapstick detour is a fresh departure from the petty verbal jabs at masculinity they usually trade with each other. 

The screenplay, written by veterans Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, is unsurprisingly barebones, with little in the way of actual characterization and sound logic. Not that I’m complaining, though. It does a decent enough job at justifying Johnson and Statham basically playing themselves and occasionally being replaced with computer-generated models during physics-defying stunts. 

The writing is pure genre facsimile. Even its attempts at topicality are undercut by how perfunctory and dated they are. A major plot turn that shows the villains’ effortless ability to fabricate news headlines would honestly have shocked me if Tomorrow Never Dies – the severely underappreciated 18^th James Bond film released all the way back in 1997 – had never existed. Oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention that the viral infection premise is a blatant retread of John Woo’s unfairly maligned Mission: Impossible 2. 

The irony is not lost on me: As much as the late-2010s blockbusters try to distance themselves from the ‘corny’ films of the previous decades, they can’t help but still cherry-pick the things that work from their forebears. 

The Fast and the Furious franchise’s malleability in regard to loose universe-building has proven to be quite the lucrative business strategy. Its aversion to cohesive, interlocking narrative means that it can easily shift gears from a self-contained action-drama to a full-blown superhero comedy that often borders on self-parody without raising any eyebrow. 

At risk of sounding unnecessarily bold, the franchise probably represents the future of shared cinematic universes, one that is incredibly cognizant of immediate changes in the market and quickly adjusts itself to maintain its mass appeal. 

It’s the film industry in microcosm. We’re all here for it. (wng)