Month: August 2019

Enlarge / LOOKS LIKE THEM DUKE BOYS ARE AT IT AGAIN (credit: Universal Pictures)

This week, Universal Pictures announced that a different Fast and Furious movie will be in theaters once a week starting today, leading up to the franchise's newest sequel on June 25. The best part of the announcement? The showings are free. (The second-best part of the announcement is how often it refers to the F&F movies as a "saga.") As we previously learned, once a week for this series is arguably a saner way to devour so much vehicular mayhem than the four-day gauntlet we endured—and we've resurfaced that 2019 article below. If health or safety precautions make Universal's latest promotion inaccessible to you as of late, never fear: we're riding again, much like the Duke boys, with a look back at all the engine-gunning, Corona-drinking, window-smashing fun so that you don't feel left out.

As of last week, I had never seen any movies in the Fast & Furious franchise. I probably missed the first one in 2001 because I was planning my wedding or something else equally pedestrian. Then, before I knew it, there were seven more, and I had no chance of catching up.

But now the franchise has lasted longer than any of our president's marriages and has just birthed its first spin-off feature. So I have taken it upon myself to shotgun all eight movies in four days and report back to you what they have taught me about cars.

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  Hattie Shaw (Vanessa Kirby), Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), and Luke Hobbs (The Rock) star in Hobbs and Shaw. [credit: Universal Pictures ]

It's August, the height of summer, and that means it's time for the season's traditional tent pole action movies. Hobbs and Shaw, the new Fast and Furious spinoff starring Idris Elba, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Vanessa Kirby, and Jason Statham has just reached the cinemas, and to say I'd been looking forward to catching up with the franchise's latest is an understatement.

The Rock is Luke Hobbs, an "always gets his man" type working for the US Diplomatic Security Service. Statham plays Deckard Shaw, a former British spec-ops fellow. Both characters were introduced in previous movies as antiheroes, but after teaming up—kind of—in 2017's Fate of the Furious, the forces of destiny (or the writers) have thrown them together in a buddy movie.

I don't want to give too much away about the plot, but there's a McGuffin, and Brixton—played by Idris Elba—wants it. He wants it bad. The problem is, the McGuffin has been injected into Vanessa Kirby's Hattie Shaw, MI6 spy and Deckard's sister. Obviously neither the Shaws nor Hobbses want Brixton to get his hands on the McGuffin, and the story goes from there.