Halálos iramban: Hobbs & Shaw

Csak a központi párosnak van valami köze a Halálos iramban című sorozathoz. Az M:I filmekre akar hasonlítani, de inkább a G.I. Joe filmsorozatra hasonlít. Csak a mesebeli Vaiana menti meg a helyzetet, bár sokkal ostobább, paradox módon idősebb közönségnek szánt változatban. Körülbelül tíz százalékban vicces, a központi páros közötti haveros kémia gyenge (első találkozás egy üveg irodában WTF?), csak az utolsó akciójelenet érdekes. (2019.08.26)

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. (2019.08.07)

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% (2019.08.05)

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. (2019.07.31)

A spin-off that could have taken a step aside and "grounded" the franchise from overblown CGI escapades that squander the undeniable testosterone potential, into less overblown macho action with a top-notch central duo that has a workable "dude bro" chemistry between them. It could have been a blockbuster in the style of Tango & Cash. The result, however, is a behemoth with cyborgs, Transformers bikes, programmable viruses, even more overblown scenes with a green screen behind Rock and Statham, Spectre/Hydra and an overblown running time. This is G.I. Joe III more than anything. And on top of that, the central duo, whom the filmmakers let squirm in one "I've got bigger balls than you" position for the entire film, they are (childishly) funny at first, but they squander it over the course of more than two hours. Still, it has a few solid moments, a few glimpses of guilty pleasure scenes and especially in the first half it moves along, before things get good for an hour in Russia and Samoa. (2019.08.06)

Hollywood finally reached the level of Hong Kong, though only in the category of action comedies with a freely episodic screenplay. So, there will be variety-show cameos and a screenplay created through brainstorming and jumping across genres without structure. Except it is a shame that instead of real action attractions, we only have video game-style CGI mirages. The question remains as to whether the filmmakers should be cursed for engaging in futility according to western norms, or if we should praise them for creating a perfect product for the Chinese market, where precisely this sort of thing has the greatest success. Nevertheless, it is commendable that the producers finally cut out the weakest and most laughable part of the whole franchise, i.e. Vin Diesel, though the blather about family remained, only this time it is interspersed with more sequences of boring dick-measuring contests that do not have the slightest spark of real homoerotic tension. But perhaps David Leitch made enough money with this job to be able to shoot something proper again someday. (2020.05.01)

An Extremely entertaining, action-packed, nitro-boosted joyride. The B-movie plot interspersed with over-the top-action scenes, with a designer virus and a lone bad guy who values nothing more than good old friendship and family, is no surprise in this franchise. Diesel style. Leitch is aware of that this is essentially a B-movie, so he grabs it by the udders and milks its absurdities for all they're worth. Statham and Johnson’s well-honed one-liners are like something straight out of the '80s. The kinetic and clear-cut action pays respect to the old school, even though it’s upgraded like Idris Elba, who played a black Superman with unbelievable verve. The time flies by as we are taken to great locations and the cameos are the icing on the cake. Vanessa Kirby has style and at the end the whole thing cries out loud for a sequel. And I say yes to that. ... it melts their guts. She’s already nine years old, she’s ready to hear things like that. (2019.07.31)

A loud, overblown and clunky action film with a digital finale and a director who can’t handle a blockbuster. It's a wonder that the action doesn't really stomp much, because for example Atomic Blonde may have had a script that was too convoluted and made it stumble in the last stretch, but what made it stand out was the climactic action. The potential here was endless, they had a two-metre mountain of muscle and and a chiseled bloke, master of all martial arts. So, what happened with Leitch’s typical signature is a big mystery. Idris Elba was far more interesting, but his character, unfortunately, had a flat trajectory. Kirby was OK. At the beginning things still look decent, the car chase in London was very good, but things get weaker in the East, and the Samoa action definitely buries it. It will probably find its fan base, despite the lack of Vin Diesel, the franchise's main draw, and I'd much rather watch the twenty-fifth episode, where all the key characters are together. (2019.08.04)

Are the screenwriters and director really more than 15 years old? I can't really believe that, or that the same David Leitch shot John Wick. Of course, the Fast and Furious series is also getting faster, more frantic and more and more ridiculous, but at least it's fun. Hobbs and Shaw didn't amuse me much except for in a few scenes. (2021.09.05)

The two greatest guilty-pleasure icons of today comparing the size of various body parts in a wisecrack-packed action flick from the director of John Wick and Deadpool and… it’s not fun? Before the screening, I obediently performed the process of brain paralysis, which let me have a lot of fun with some of the action scenes (the helicopter one at the end is awesome, really), but the rest runs somehow on fumes. Save for a couple of exceptions, the humour is very forced and it’s soon clear that these two brutes are better together in secondary roles, where they can sneer at each other for ten minutes and then give way to some proper jokes. The story, on the other hand, it’s low-brow junk salvaged from a couple of decades ago that goes by fast and brings some welcome diversity with Vanessa Kirby, but after so many Fast and Furious, the viewer has lost their naivete and won’t be very impressed by a black superman unable to destroy a semi-nude rugby team with a javelin. I looked forward to it, but the market saturation with similar nonsense and the lack of creativity frustrated my experience. (2019.09.14)

I was looking forward to watching BoxOfficeMojo halfway through the film, whether this forlorn, static bore cost two hundred million bucks. And it did! Because if there's anything that downright screamed at me from this movie, it's the filmmakers' panic. And so it was probably from the fact that somewhere in the process they're horribly out of money and they're unable to figure out and patch up where. I don't see any other reason for why the movie looks like it cost a million and fifty. Like the similarly overpriced last entry in the F&F franchise, it alternates three types of shots: static mid-shots and medium close-ups with aggressive drone flyovers. Which reveals an unfortunate attempt to successfully divide the scene and the three elements that are supposed to sell it, namely famous actors and expensive locations. However, the filmmakers lack any sensibilities for this. On the one hand, there's a harrowing five-minute-or-so scene with Kevin Hart painfully searching for a joke the entire time and unhappily cutting between three static shots so pointlessly that I got the impression the actors involved weren't actually in the same room at the time. On the other hand, a telephoto drone circles furiously during a scene of Johnson and Kirby drinking beer on the shore. I was absolutely furious at the work of the production designer, who must have had it all famously up their ass, because if a location headline in a movie announces "secret tech headquarters of terrorist group in former factory" I expect anything but the interior of a movie studio, with four tents set up on the sides and white lamps running down the middle. The logical guess that it only took half a day to build the set again goes pretty much against the solid fact of a two-hundred-million-dollar budget. I'll skip over the pastel image, the completely CGI action scenes, the fact that Vanessa Kirby twists her face like a pike most of the time, dozens of other failures, and stop at the last one – namely the characters. Because if there was anything I was eminently uncomfortable with, it was watching two elite assassins who don't go far for a shot or a bullet cursing each other in accessibility for the whole family, feigning any mutual animosity by quirking their eyebrows and constantly varying the fact that someone has a small penis, someone has a big penis, and it usually comes with the fact that the one with the big penis has big testicles and the one with the small testicles has a small penis. Combined with dialogue like "You know, when we get there, you can't kill anybody, Hobbs." "Yes, Shaw, because we have to use their retinas to pick the lock." "That's right, Hobbs." we might as well admit that any affinity for this masterpiece is essentially an act of resignation to the action movie genre. "Oh no, it's self-aware and clever when it quotes Nietzsche!" Shut up. (2019.10.30)