Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

Die Dialoge von Hobbs und Shaw haben mich wirklich amüsiert, vor allem erinnere ich mich an den im Flugzeug, der noch von dem peinlichen Flughafenpolizisten gekrönt wurde. Idris Elba als Science-Fiction-Bösewicht erfüllte seine Erwartungen, und Vanessa Kirby passte sich perfekt ins Team ein. Vielleicht die überflüssigen Verzögerungen im Stile eines amerikanischen Auf-Familie-Machens und die Ausdehnung auf Samoa hätten die Macher weglassen können, doch auch so verzeihe ich ihnen, denn The Fast and the Furious erfüllte sein traditionelles Ziel - die Realität vergessen, sich abreagieren, sich amüsieren. (03.09.2019)

Das Einzige, was dieser Film mit der Serie Fast & Furious gemeinsam hat, ist das Hauptduo. Er möchte an M:I erinnern, aber am meisten sieht es wie G.I. Joe - Geheimauftrag Cobra aus. Den Film rettet nur die Märchen-Vaiana, obwohl es sich um eine wesentlich dümmere Darstellung handelt und paradoxerweise für das ältere Publikum. Witzig sind nur so 10 %, die Buddy-Chemie bei den zwei Hauptfiguren ist armselig (das erste Treffen in einem gläsernen Büro WTF?) und von den Actionszenen ist nur die letzte interessant. (26.08.2019)

Is it just me that feels like A-list popcorn cinema is getting more and more dimwitted? Kudos to the exceptions, like Christopher Nolan, who have set the bar high and are not about to lower it. At the opposite pole is this horrible trainwreck, like written by five-year old boys, starting with the futile humour, zero chemistry between the main actors, ending with the five thousandth or so variation on a stolen planet-wide deadly virus (again?) and an upgraded human terminator who has wandered in from another genre – some sci-fi Asylum production. And, to top it all off, an indulgent, smiling Ryan Reynolds and with him, the stupid Kevin Hart. Nobody laughed in the whole cinema, nobody, even though the filmmakers were smashing their jokes on your face like stinking socks and screaming at you: “Laugh! This is funny!!!” Well, sorry, scriptwriting impotents, I didn’t have any fun. (07.08.2019)

I got what I expected. Hobbs and Shaw is a spectacular action film in which reality has nothing to do, and the closer it gets to its end, the more elaborate, insane and bigger it gets. And given that the power plant here blows up somewhere around the 70th minute, you probably have an idea of what it looks like at the end. David Leitch has approached this Fast and Furious spin-off as a modern adrenaline-packed Bond film, but unlike, say, xXx, it works brilliantly. Jason Statham and The Rock are great in both the action scenes and the moments when they're bantering. Idris Elba also nails the bad guy, and Vanessa Kirby is not only sexy, but she manages to keep up with the heroes in the action scenes as well. The only thing that bothered me is that Hobbs and Shaw didn't take the opportunity to be significantly different than the franchise it came from. I was hoping that they the film would push the envelope a lot more, and that the kind of futile attempt to look serious and earnest that we've been seeing from Vin Diesel for a few years now would disappear. Hobbs and Shaw have the chops to put their own face on it and step in a slightly different direction. But they were a little afraid to do it the first time, and when they did, they were a little clumsy. On the other hand, that's also why I hope they get at least one more chance. (31.07.2019)

Hobbs & Shaw is this year’s biggest guilty pleasure thanks to the ingenious use of parallel editing (the duality of the introductory sequence reminded me of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train), Vanessa Kirby and the quoting of Nietzsche. The film becomes doubly entertaining when you notice how it reflects the career development and media image of both protagonists: Dwayne Johnson as a Samoan warrior who immediately enchants everyone with his charisma and Jason Statham as an elegant British criminal who once did a job in Italy. In the context of changes in the action genre, Hobbs & Shaw is characterised both by a distinctive female lead and by its approximation of comic-book films featuring teams of superheroes. Idris Elba plays a villain who has high-tech toys like Iron Man and refers to himself as a black Superman, while Johnson and Statham are essentially indestructible superheroes. Of course, success is only achievable through cooperation, not individually. Thanks to the emphasis on family relationships, which the filmmakers brought to Hobbs & Shaw from previous instalments of the Fast & Furious franchise, this play on sentimentality does not come across as fake, in contrast to the bombastic action. On the contrary, beyond the exploding factories, flying cars and other mechanically and precisely managed over-the-top situations, it ensures that you are aware of understandable human emotions and values ​​with which the viewer can identify. From the perspective of the genre’s history (and the filmic representation of masculinity), it is a stimulating mix of bluntly straightforward, hypermasculine ’80s action, ’90s self-ironic postmodernism and a family-oriented comic-book blockbuster. 80% (05.08.2019)