Hobbs & Shaw is just as entertaining as any Fast & Furious movie, and it happens to be quite comical as well.

Score: 3.5 / 5

To this day, the story of Fast & Furious as a franchise still shocks me. The first few movies were dumb for not the right reasons. The acting was, uh, something, and the action was also just okay. Then Fast & Furious happened, and the franchise began to find a footing. Then Fast Five blew the door down and turned what was a joke of a film franchise into a juggernaut. Since that globe-trotting heist film, the franchise learned how to make dumb fun, with actors in on it and action scenes that made it worth sticking around for. The success has been so sky-high that here we are with a spin-off to Fast & Furious. What times do we live in, huh?

Hobbs & Shaw takes the elements of the main franchise and doesn’t try to mess with the formula too much. It still has cheese about family, the action is absolutely bonkers, and it knows that it’s dumb fun in all the right ways. Where this movie is different is that it leans more into the humor territory than before. One of the most interesting things about the Fate of the Furious (the 8th film in the core franchise) was the pairing of Luke Hobbs (Dwanye Jonhson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). The two played off each other both in action and comedy in the best ways. So naturally, a spin-off with these two made the most sense out of any of these characters.

It works, I enjoyed this movie just as much as the last couple of Furious movies. In fact this is the best Vin-less Fast movie by far, competing with some of the better entries in the franchise. It helps that the cast also has some new blood that fits in nicely with the duo. Vanessa Kirby plays Shaw’s sister and is awesome in this movie. She’s smart, she’s deadly, and she’s a great new addition to hopefully a continuing sub-franchise. Then you have Idris Elba, who is probably my favorite villain of the Fast series, next to Shaw himself. As the trailers proclaim, he’s black Superman. His character injects the craziest action yet into the franchise, which sometimes gets a little too video game-like, but hey, you really have nowhere else to go after the previous film had them race against a submarine.

I would be remiss if not adding that there are two (three in my books) amazing cameos that add an extra splash of humor that gives the Hobbs & Shaw spin-off a greater identity of its own. I don’t want to ruin it, but these scenes were great, and I’d love to see them return if we get a sequel. This then leads me to an interesting statement I didn’t think I would say.

Hobbs & Shaw has some very interesting world-building. They introduce this new super evil organization. It has vague connections to our anti-heroes, and by the end of the film, we are left with no conclusion as to what they are planning next. Where in the main Fast franchise, this type of stuff seems a tad silly for car thieves, it makes a whole lot more sense for super spies and government agents to get tangled into stuff like this.

Was this the best action movie I have ever seen? No. Was it dumb? Yes, it sure was. But Hobbs & Shaw knows exactly what it was and gave me a fun, entertaining ride, which sometimes is all I need when I go to the movies.