God, this movie is so dumb. Which, to be fair, it never pretends or presents itself as anything different. There's a plot, vaguely, about a super virus and some company wanting to use it to remove the "weak" of humanity, but the movie's not really about that. Just a big, dumb spectacle.
And much of the time, that works. Dwayne Johnson's a charismatic dude, and I generally like Jason Statham in everything I see him in. I feel like Idris Elba could have gone more over-the-top, chewed more scenery to keep up with them, but he did alright. The "black Superman" line was pretty good. Alex and I got a lot of mileage out of that. Vanessa Kirby gets to be a smartass at the two stars enough to not get entirely lost in the shuffle.
The set piece chase sequences and some of the fights are ridiculous enough to be fun. Kirby trying to hit the Rock with anything she can find (although I was surprised he didn't no-sell the bike helmet upside the head.) The chase in the Ukraine was probably my favorite, once they actually started trying to escape, instead of having Idris Elba be the pitchman for some shitty techbro group of enhanced humanity losers.
Some of the casual banter and insults are funny. The ones where it's less a macho pissing contest about how badly one of them is going to kick the crap out of the other. Admittedly, most of the insults are a macho pissing contest. I laughed at the one where Statham describes Johnson's favorite shirt size as "spray-on", and Johnson tells him to put on another jacket, it's 110 degrees outside. I don't know if I'd buy it as a gradual friendship, but I'm not sure the movie is trying to convince us that's happening. At best, maybe the two of them enjoy making each other miserable too much to kill each other.
At the same time, there are several parts that feel self-indulgent. Not surprising, if the rumors this movie exists because Johnson and Statham didn't like playing second fiddle to Vin Diesel are accurate. There are just parts that drag on too long. The sequences where Hobbs and Shaw insult each other, but the camera is aimed so we're seeing things from one of their perspectives as it happens. Like I'm the one insulting or being insulted. I didn't really see the point of that.
The Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds appearances, which are really just excuses for those two to be themselves for too many consecutive minutes. Hart annoyed me more than Reynolds, because I generally enjoy Ryan Reynolds more, but they're playing essentially the same character.
The big confrontation, where they have maybe six minutes before the bad guys' guns start working again, and they waste time with the traditional Samoan dance/chant thing. Show a little urgency, people, unless you enjoy being shot by asshole in tactical gear.
Movie could have been 15-20 minutes shorter and worked just as well. I don't really buy that everything in the movie happened in 3 days. Especially not that they went from London (with the Rock being detained by security) to the Ukraine (where they had a big fight/chase) to the Samoa (where they had lots of family issues and prepared a battlefield) in 42 hours. But I'm sure I wasn't supposed to be keeping track of that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Yeah, I agree - it was big, dumb and (mostly) fun, and every now and then, that's what I like in a film.
I've a lot of time for Dwayne Johnson as he's usually entertaining in most everything he does, and while I know next to nothing about the Fast and Furious films (haven't seen one of them but have seen enough trailers to get the gist) was happy to go see this in the cinema last year.
I've tried to convince one of my friends to watch the Fast and the Furious movies, because of how ridiculous they get. She won't, because she can't stand Vin Diesel (I don't remember why). Maybe she'd actually give this one a try.
Post a Comment