FAST AND FURIOUS: HOBBS AND SHAW (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

I think some of the "Fast and Furious" flicks may have some metaphenomenal content, though I've never watched them closely enough to take any notes. The franchise is meant to function on pure high-octane action, and I don't have a problem with that, in itself. With this spin-off, however, the producers evidently chose to get their SF-freak on right away.

H & S focuses on two support-characters introduced in 2017's THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS: former DSS agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and ex-MI6 operative Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). For reasons I forget, Hobbs and Shaw take an instant dislike to each other, and so all through H&S the two ex-agents rescue the world from a major super-soldier threat while continuously slamming one another's manhood.

Again, I'm not put off by the movie's insistence on almost constant action if I thought it was being done well. Johnson, though, is basically a walking mountain, so, former pro wrestler or not, that's what he always brings to the fight-scenes. Statham is one of the best movie-fighters still active in the industry. But the producers aren't interested in well-crafted fight-scenes. They just want their two heroes tearing through endless armies of heavily armed soldiers like they were tissue paper. A little of that can be entertaining, but in H&S, it become monotonous.

The one exception is that there's another ex-agent on the loose, Shaw's former colleague Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), and he's been given cybernetic super-powers by an insidious corporation, Eteon, so he's not so easy for H&S to beat down. Eteon has perfected a supervirus that can purge humanity of the persons Eteon deems unnecessary. But Hattie Shaw (Vanessa Kirby), another MI6 agent (and sister of Deckard), absconds with the virus by injecting herself with it, and thus she becomes another "bone" over which the two big dogs fight. 

I sometimes give a movie extra points for tossing in sociological motifs. But H&S introduces, late in the film, an opposition between Eteon's ruthless worship of technology and Hobbs' Samoan heritage, and it feels entirely phony. On balance, the fights between the quarreling heroes and "Black Superman" are decent (with Elba stealing all the scenes) and some of the insults are funny. Everything else is from hunger.