War and pieces: 'Hobbs & Shaw' is a brilliantly fast and furious film

A word of caution right at the outset: if you’re looking for some acting — even the remotely passable kind — then Hobbs & Shaw is not for you. This is not acting; this is a clash of personalities where bruised egos and ample brawn come to a head amid acts of copious violence and inescapable vehicular carnage.

Dwayne Johnson technically plays Luke Hobbs, but in actuality, he’s exactly like, well, Dwayne Johnson, trying to sneak in push-ups whenever he can and intimidating the baddies with his sheer size. Jason Statham is Deckard Shaw, a classic Statham-esque character who smirks a lot, laughs sparingly and speaks in a smug cockney accent that is sure to elude you if you’re not paying attention. The former antagonists must now come together to save Shaw’s sister, Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), a former spy who has been injected with a lethal virus. Also lurking is Brixton Lore (Idris Elba), a cyber-genetically enhanced villain who is part of Eteon, a rogue organisation that is on the lookout for the same virus.

The storyline may sound grim, but Hobbs & Shaw is director David Leitch’s attempt at showcasing the banter between the film’s two male leads. Leitch niftily uses some split-screen to highlight their contrasting personas, but the antipathy between the two never seems natural. The jokes land only occasionally (the one where Shaw hands his partner-in-crime a pair of pants boasting about the size of his private parts is a good one), but the duo’s overall eccentric chemistry steers the film nicely for the most part.

Being a Fast & Furious spin-off, the most enjoyable parts, of course, arrive in the form of the action sequences. The standouts include a sprint down the front of an impossibly tall skyscraper and a row of cars helping Hobbs lasso a military chopper. Buildings are flattened and vehicles get blown up — the ludicrousness of it all made believable by the lead duo’s relentless machismo. The CGI-powered scenes seem overdone sometimes, but are riveting to watch nonetheless.

All the testosterone would have been enough to overshadow the female lead in normal circumstances, but Kirby shines amid the chaos, turning in a layered and well-rounded performance that lends the film desperately needed depth. This role is also an ode to her versatility — from playing the naïve and reckless Princess Margaret in The Crown to jumping out of airplanes in Hobbs & Shaw, there is very little that she now can’t do. (Her otherwise robust character, though, is somewhat diminished by Leitch’s half-baked attempt at romantically linking her with Hobbs, which, much like the Shaw-Hobbs enmity, comes across as utterly unconvincing.)

Elba’s screen prowess, on the other hand, is criminally under-utilised. He does manage to add some swagger to his villainous streak, but his is a weak character sketch that is woefully one-dimensional and annoyingly repetitive after a point.

As the action moves from London to Moscow and eventually to the mountains of Samoa, the emotional quotient of the film also undergoes a drastic shift. Shaw’s deadpan humour is replaced by Hobbs’ sentimental reunion with his family; traditional war weapons take the place of guns. Also thrown in is a sequence of the villagers doing the haka, a rare delight in a Hollywood action film that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

The mawkish family trope is a familiar mainstay in the Fast & Furious series, and while the intention to “show heart” is admirable, the emotional bonds in Hobbs & Shaw come across as shallow, which invariably hurt the tempo of the film as it draws to a close. As a pure action film, Hobbs & Shaw is brilliant at being thrillingly fast and furious. On a deeper level, it suffers from various inadequacies, which could have been avoided had the makers just stuck to their usual shtick of exploding buildings and flying cars.