Spoilers throughout, along with guest commentary from L (in purple).
This film does not hang together well.
If that's a problem for you; this is not the film for you.
This said, if you came into a film co-billing Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson & Jason "The Stath" Statham, and were really needing a film that hangs together well…you have unreasonable expectations, and need to have a word with yourself.
No, run along and have a word with yourself; the rest of us have other business to which to attend.
Whether by accident or design, it feels like an otherwise unrelated film, a buddy cop film along the lines of Tango and Cash was shoehorned into a Fast & Furious shape.
Add to this the first half an hour or so where we have two unpleasant characters being unpleasant to each other and generally acting like they've got testosterone poisoning and you've got a film that quite quickly teeters over onto the "no" side of the "yes/no" pile.
Sudden unexpected Ryan Reynolds does not help its standing.
It does settle down after the first half hour and becomes watchable if your pleasures are CGI action adventure-y.
There are some nice character touches. Vanessa Kirby and Helen Mirren are their usual excellent selves, and Eddie Marsan's not-so-evil scientist going HAM with a flamethrower stirs something deep in my soul, but the film's basically a waste of Idris Elba which is a terrible shame.
Come to think of it, when was the last time Idiris Elba wasn't wasted? Thor 3? Maybe?
Having read up on the film to write this, I have discovered that the film was David Leitch-directed goodness which explains why the fight scenes are so good.
The stunt people earned their money, there's a motorbike stunt towards the start in particular that is just *chef's kiss*.
The continuity department did not earn their money. I'm not just talking about the part of the film where the characters are said to be landing in one country but the on-screen sign is for a city in another country, but also mid-scene watch switches that are so obvious even little old me, infamously oblivious to that sort of thing, notices.
There's lot of little moments that destroy believability, not least that Hobbs & Shaw takes place in a post-apocalyptic hellscape of augmented super soldiers, nanoviruses, and Samoa apparently never having discovered rugby.
One of these things is more unbelievable than the others, and it's not the super soldiers.
Now probably part of that is that none of the film was filmed in Samoa, it was filmed in Hawaii. While I am aware that the concept of Samoan brotherhood espoused by the film's characters is about people not places, and the large Samoan diaspora in Hawaii, if you're going to have characters spend so much time talking about the glory of Samoa, at least help their economy out by filming there.
Overall, the bits that don't work are the bits that connect it to Fast and Furious, which I think strengthens my feeling that it was based on an unrelated script and they've just smooshed it in.
The main problem is [Jason Statham's character's name] Deckard Shaw He gets a name when he stops basically being Jason Statham. I will never forgive him for killing Han, and I don't care how they have since retconned that. At the time, he was still responsible and it remains unforgivable.
If you like mindless explosions, it's not bad, but even in that genre, it's at best mid-range.
If you want to watch The Rock, watch "The Rundown/Welcome to the Jungle"; if you want to watch Jason Statham, watch "Hummingbird" (which proves he can act if he's bothered to).
In neither of those films are we subjected to a hellscape where Samoa doesn't have rugby.
No comments:
Post a Comment