The Fast and the Furious franchise has had a fascinating tenure in theaters and, true to its title, is showing no signs of slowing down. While the main franchise will continue with the upcoming ninth movie, new ground is being broken with spinoff movies. The first of these experiments comes in the form of Hobbs & Shaw, starring The Rock and Jason Statham as their respective badass characters.
The trailers for Hobbs & Shaw promised over the top action, as well as quick fire dialogue shared between its two title characters. While the movie is obviously anticipated by the fandom, how well did it fare with critics? The reviews are in, and it seems that the movie is delivering all the beats that you’d expect. CinemaBlend’s Eric Eisenberg gave Hobbs & Shaw 3.5 stars out of five, saying:
It’s always fun when you can feel a palpable confidence from a blockbuster, and this one has it flowing. Not every stylistic choice fully works (especially those that get significant set ups without big payoffs), and logic isn’t consistently the narrative’s greatest concern, but the majority of its big swings connect.
While imperfect and sometimes illogical, it seems that Hobbs & Shaw really delivers on the action and char. And as such, any little details like that can be put aside to enjoy the Fast and Furious spinoff.
Unfortunately, not all critics seemed to enjoy Hobbs & Shaw as much as Eric Eisenberg did. Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson took particular umbrage with the spinoff’s script, in particular the two characters’ constant jabbing of each other. As he put it:
Johnson and Statham do little to surprise here. We have seen this dance before, and without the new and hoped-for shadings of blossoming love (or, hell, plain old lust), Hobbs & Shaw is a repetitive kind of experience. The guys say nasty things about their balls and puking to one another (the script, by Fast veteran Chris Morgan and Hotel Artemis director Drew Pearce, is downright ugly), and then they go a-shooting’ and a-punching’, all in service of tracking down a killer virus and warding off the menace of a mechanically enhanced rogue agent played by Idris Elba.
The Fast & the Furious franchise has become one of the biggest action franchises in the business, leaving behind car races for over the top action.