Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

image for Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

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Not suitable under 13; parental guidance to 15 (violence, language, sexual references)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw
  • a review of Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 12 August 2019.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 13 Not suitable due to violence, coarse language, and sexual references.
Children aged 13–15 Parental guidance recommended due to violence, coarse language, and sexual references.
Children aged 16 and over Ok for this age group.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw
Classification: M
Consumer advice lines: Action violence and coarse language
Length: 137 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

When MI-6 field agent Hattie (Vanessa Kirby), sister of mercenary Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), is framed for killing her field team and stealing a deadly virus, Shaw and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) must team up to save her and the world.  The unlikely duo face the fight of their lives against a cyber-genetically enhanced ghost from Shaw’s past, Brixton (Idris Elba), who wants to ‘upgrade’ the best of humanity and eliminate the weakest.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Crime; Violence; Biowarfare

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is some violence in this movie including:

  • Frequent and high impact hand-to-hand combat and gun-based violence (e.g. people are shot, tasered, hit with objects, etc.)
  • Dangerous driving that results in harm to other motorists, and Brixton crashing through a bus (he is unharmed, but the bus is torn in two)
  • Hobbs threatens to tattoo the face of a “bad guy” if he does not reveal information – He tattoos his forehead anyway (the man screams in pain) – This is comedic but may be distressing for children
  • A man is trapped in chains and threatened with both a gun and a flame-thrower (others are also attacked with a flame-thrower)
  • Hobbs and Shaw are strapped by their necks to generators and shocked with electricity for a prolonged period
  • A man’s neck is broken by Brixton
  • Brixton is picked up and slammed headfirst into a rock by Hobbs (wrestling-style)

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

  • Brixton is a cyber-genetically enhanced soldier who is almost indestructible and likely to be frightening to children – His eyes glow orange when he is using his cyber enhancements to fight others

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

  • Brixton is subjected to spinal surgery during his enhancements, during which he is not anaesthetised – He screams in pain

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged eight to thirteen, including the following:

  • Hattie is forced to put the deadly virus in her own body and is steadily running out of time to remove it as the movie progresses – This may distress slightly older children as the risk to her health increases throughout the film

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

  • Nothing of additional concern

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

  • VW car
  • Foreman weights
  • Moët & Chandon
  • Adidas clothing
  • Smartphones
  • Triumph motorcycles
  • Apple MacBook
  • AirPods
  • Fiat car
  • Dell computer
  • Hotmail
  • LinkedIn
  • Toyota
  • Chevrolet

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • Women are frequently dressed in a sexualised way with minimal clothing and highly visible cleavage (e.g. close-up of a woman’s bottom in skin-tight hotpants)
  • Hobbs tells a scantily clad woman “nice tats” while pointing at her chest
  • Hobbs refers to himself as being “well endowed”

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • Shaw intimately kisses a scantily clad woman before doing a business deal with her

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

  • Drinking – Spirits and beer

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • Hell
  • Ass
  • Shit
  • Bugger
  • Dickface
  • Goddamn
  • Fuck
  • Bitch
  • Wanker
  • Damn

In a nutshell

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is the first in the spin-off series from the Fast & Furious franchise.  While funny and action-packed, this movie is a fairly ‘paint-by-numbers’ action-comedy with frequent violence, high speed car chases and sexualised depictions of women.  This movie is not appropriate for children under 13 due to violence, coarse language, and sexual references.  Parental guidance is recommended for children under 16.   

The main message from this movie is that working together, even with those we may not like, allows us to achieve great things.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

  • The importance of family

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

  • Children playing with explosives
  • Sexualising attitudes toward women