REVIEW: Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Courtesy of Universal

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
(Rated PG-13 for prolonged sequences of action and violence, suggestive material and some strong language.)

Who could’ve guessed back in 2001 that The Fast and the Furious, a Point Break rip-off about street racing thieves, would eventually spawn seven sequels and a spinoff that could easily launch its own franchise? Hobbs & Shaw proves you should never underestimate the charisma of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, whose subplot in The Fate of the Furious (allegedly needed because a feuding Vin Diesel and Johnson refused to share scenes together) was easily the most successful part of that lackluster installment.

Turns out that allowing Johnson and Statham to do their own thing was the healthiest decision for the series. By jettisoning the other characters – especially the absurdly serious Diesel – and the convoluted mythology, screenwriters Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, along with director David Leitch, can start fresh (they barely reference the previous flicks) while continuing to embrace the franchise’s most ridiculously entertaining aspects.

The plot gloriously simple, leaving plenty of room for insane action sequences and silly banter. A genetically enhanced villain (Idris Elba, clearly having a blast playing a character who boasts that he’s “black Superman”) sets his sights on a virus that could wipe out humanity. Lawman Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and former mercenary Deckard Shaw (Statham) are tasked with stopping him, despite their many protests that they work alone. They’re also teamed with Hattie (the terrific Vanessa Kirby), a mysterious new character with a personal stake in containing the virus.

Even though Hobbs & Shaw runs a bit too long at 135 minutes (courtesy of nonstop, physics-defying action sequences, improv-heavy arguments and some delightfully surprising cameos), it’s a fun way to end the summer movie season after months of lackluster options.

A colleague of mine pointed out this franchise is basically Universal’s version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They don’t have access to beloved comic book superheroes, so they’ve retroactively created their own with characters they already have the rights to. That’s an astute observation, which checks out after the gloriously bonkers stuff that happens in this movie.

At some point – I can’t remember if it was after Hobbs ran down the side of a skyscraper, or when he punched out a car window and grabbed a bad guy off his motorcycle, or while he was pulling a helicopter out of the sky with a chain and his bare hands – but I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “This is the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen. I love it.” I hope they make five more.

Grade: B+

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Courtesy of Sony

(Rated R for language throughout, some strong graphic violence, drug use, and sexual references.)

Controversial filmmaker Quentin Tarantino rebounds from 2015’s lackluster, mean-spirited The Hateful Eight with this nostalgia-tinged love letter to the bygone days of Hollywood. The writer-director is known for sudden tonal shifts, but his pivot from the worst of humanity to a wistful look at flawed-but-genial characters is downright whiplash-inducing.

Still, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is bound to be divisive even by Tarantino’s standards, although not necessarily because of the film’s language or ultraviolence, which most viewers have come to expect. They know what they’re getting into. It’s the film’s intentionally shaggy structure that’s going to alienate a lot of people: a nearly-three hour, mostly plotless story in which characters sit around, talk a lot, drive while listening to the radio, watch movies and TV, and drink too much.

Honestly, aside from a couple of suspenseful and funny exceptions, there’s no traditional “action” to speak of until the movie’s final moments. The framework of the story, which mostly takes place in the early months of 1969, revolves around three main characters. Rick Dalton (Leonard DiCaprio) is an old-school leading man, the former star of a Western television series who gave that up to risk a movie career that didn’t pan out.

Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is his stunt man and faithful sidekick – although one could certainly argue who is the alpha in the relationship. They’re both starting to realize their days in the industry are probably numbered since younger performers are getting all the jobs. One of those performers is the beautiful, talented Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie).

Representing the face of new Hollywood, she mostly exists in her own subplot, almost never crossing paths with the other characters even though she and her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), are Rick’s next-door neighbors. As you might expect, the film’s relaxed, free-flowing tone is constantly undercut with foreboding and melancholy as the story hurtles toward seeming inevitability.

Don’t let the film’s deceptively slow pace fool you. Even when the characters are doing something mundane like repairing a television antenna, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface – including powerful themes like masculinity, friendship, the fleeting nature of success and how fast the world can change before you realize it.

It took two viewings of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for the film and its structure to click into place for me; but once I did, I absolutely fell in love with it. Sequences that initially seemed indulgent or over-the-top worked much better.

Something else that hit me harder on that second round is the title’s importance – it’s Tarantino’s twisted version of a fairy tale. Obviously, the most explicit connection involves the movie’s final half-hour, which is already proving to be contentious. But it also relates to several other subplots involving Rick and Cliff, in their careers and personal lives – especially a sequence where Cliff drops a hitchhiker (Margaret Qualley) off at Spahn Ranch, which demonstrates Tarantino could make an incredible horror movie.

As for performances, they’re fantastic across the board, including famous faces who only pop up for a scene or two, including Al Pacino, Timothy Olyphant and Luke Perry. DiCaprio and Pitt – two of our last remaining movie stars – have remarkable chemistry and their own successful careers add emotional weight to their characters. They’re also doing the world a disservice by not making more comedies; I know they’re “serious” actors, but they’re also insanely funny.

Robbie is outstanding as Tate, although Tarantino mostly uses her as a symbol rather than a fully fleshed-out character. She allows viewers to see why audiences were taken with the young actress and why the heartbreaking real-life tragedy hit so hard. There’s a sequence where Tate sneaks into a theater playing one of her movies, and Robbie’s reaction to the crowd makes it an instant classic.

While Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might not affect other viewers – including typical Tarantino fans – as profoundly as it did me, it’s a fascinating addition to the filmmaker’s body of work. Although it contains his usual oddball humor and bursts of shocking violence, it might be his most heartfelt, sentimental movie yet.

Grade: A