“Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” (PG-13)

With the “Fast & Furious” franchise seemingly in the rearview mirror, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham are off roaring to bigger and better things with “Hobbs & Shaw,” an outrageously entertaining spinoff movie featuring the friendly adversaries from the most recent chapters in the Vin Diesel film series.

“Hobbs & Shaw” gives the exact amount of time to Johnson’s Luke Hobbs and Statham’s Deckard Shaw to begin the film by inventively splitting the screen and their scenes in two, where they go about their morning routines, which wildly differ. Eventually, though, the lawman Hobbs’ and the reformed bad guy Shaw’s paths converge, as they’re both asked by their countries’ intelligence services to recover a programmable virus being carried by a lethal MI-6 agent. The stakes are raised when the MI-G agent turns out being Shaw’s estranged sister, Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), and her revelation that he had the virus – protected by capsules – injected into her bloodstream.

Interview: David Leitch talks “Deadpool 2”

Making matters worse, a secret organization hell-bent on winnowing out the weaker of the human species on Earth sends the technologically enhanced super soldier Brixton (Idris Elba) to recover the virus, and Hobbs and Shaw quickly find out that there’s little they can do to stop him. That’s bad news if he gets his hands on the virus, since it will kill millions if it’s unleashed into the world.

AUDIO: Tim reviews “Hobbs and Shaw” with Tom Barnard on “The KQ Morning Show” on KQRS-FM. Segment brought to you by Michael Bryant and Bradshaw & Bryant.

Yes, “Hobbs and Shaw” is chockfull of the same over-the-top action and doomsday scenarios that turned the “Fast & Furious” movies into a multibillion franchise, but instead of being a big, loud and dumb movie franchise that’s lost its sense of humor with its last outing, “Hobbs & Shaw” captures perfectly the chemistry that was clearly evident between Johnson and Statham in the “The Fate of the Furious.” Plus, with “Deadpool 2” director David Leitch at the helm, the film finds a way to balance the excessive crash, boom, bang with several laugh-out-loud funny moments humor throughout, making “Hobbs & Shaw” big loud and smart, and even throwing in a bit of science fiction into the plot, to boot.

Even better, Leitch employed a couple brilliant big star cameos in the film to amp up the funny, even though the film, truthfully, already had enough star power with an impressive Kirby and charismatic Elba in sizable roles, and the always delightful Helen Mirren reprising her kick-ass role from “The Fate of the Furious” as the Shaw family matriarch.

Clearly the brightest stars in “Hobbs & Shaw,” though, are Johnson and Statham, who clearly having a ball throughout the movie (there were no reports of Johnson calling anybody in the film a “candyass,” err, Vin Diesel). Johnson is especially notable because it’s clear he’s in his element, a place he hasn’t been in the underwhelming action pictures “Rampage” and “Skyscraper.” It just goes to show that a performer, once again, is only as good as their script, and even more to their benefit, is a skilled filmmaker like Leitch and a buddy movie partner like Statham.

In comparison to any of the chapters in the franchise that launched it, because of the camaraderie of the cast and clockwork precision of Leitch and his crew of filmmakers, “Hobbs & Shaw” doesn’t even feel like a “Fast & Furious” film. That’s a good thing because honestly, the “Fast” films feel like they’ve become a game of one-upmanship between cast members, and the mandate has been put on the directors to come up with new and more ridiculous ways of topping the action of the film before it.

With “Hobbs & Shaw,” as Leitch has proven before – first as the co-director of “John Wick” and again on “Deadpool 2” – the goal of the movie is to make it as entertaining as possible without taking itself too seriously. And while we already know the characters (even though nothing is lost by not seeing the previous “Fast” movies), “Hobbs & Shaw” in an odd sort of way feels new, refreshing and fun – the way summer popcorn movies should be.

Lammometer: 9 (out of 10)

Tim Lammers reviews movies weekly for “The KQ92 Morning Show,”  WCCO Radio, WJON-AM, KLZZ-FM, “The Tom Barnard Podcast” and “The BS Show” with Bob Sansevere. On TV, Tim has made hundreds of guest appearances on “KARE 11 News at 11” (NBC).

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