| [BACK]
TORQUE by Tom McCurrie
Now whenever I review an action film, I always take the artsy-fartsy cap off and ask one important question: does enough stuff get blown up (or smashed, or mangled, or wrecked) in a really cool way? Despite TORQUE's problems, and believe me, there are quite a few, this flick answers that question with a resounding yes.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Now I have to admit, I went to see TORQUE, kind of a FAST AND THE FURIOUS on two wheels instead of four, with great trepidation. After all, this is a movie that's been test screening since January...of 2003! Putting a flick this long on the shelf into theatres isn't so much a release as a wake.
And after seeing TORQUE, written by Matt Johnson and directed by Joseph Kahn, some of my trepidation was definitely warranted. First of all, the plot is both tired (a biker tries to clear himself of murder -- hmmm...that's fresh!) and stupid (he can only clear himself by finding a motorcycle part...huh?!). Then there are the logic problems, not the least of which is how people with no visible means of support can afford custom-built motorcycles worth tens of thousands of dollars. Finally, the cast is a yawn. Lead cycle jockey Martin Henderson is hunky but bland in the lead, while love interest Monet Mazur is equally wan. Worse still, Mazur looks so much like Naomi Watts that when she and Henderson are together you think you're watching outtakes of THE RING. Of course, not all the blame can be placed on the actors. As written, the characters in TORQUE are thinner than Courteney Cox's cheeks. Luckily, Ice Cube delivers plenty of feral charisma as the bad guy with a heart of gold.
But listen, we're not talkin' MYSTIC RIVER here; in fact, we're not even talkin' MYSTIC PIZZA. We're talkin' about a B-level story (and that's putting it charitably) with A-level stuntwork and effects, where the above complaints don't matter (or matter much less than, say, a Merchant-Ivory film). To put it simply, TORQUE knows what it wants to be -- a truly dumb roller-coaster ride -- and delivers on that want big time.
Now the key to any action movie's success is set-pieces that are both exciting and inventive. We've seen so many crash-and-burn flicks over the years that the same old chases and gunfights don't cut it anymore. TORQUE avoids the same-old, same-old trap by giving us several standout set-pieces. Ice Cube's cycle gang chases Henderson into a grove of palm trees, causing several head-on and butt-over-tip crashes in excess of one hundred miles per hour. Ice Cube then chases Henderson on the roof (and through the middle of) a moving passenger train -- while both are still on their bikes! Henderson zooms after chief bad guy Matt Schulze using the Y2K, sort of a Tomahawk missile with wheels. Since this chase is through the crowded streets of Downtown L.A., one of these major characters is soon reduced to fiery road pizza. My personal favorite has Mazur and her female nemesis having a catfight for the ages as they literally use their motorbikes to slap each other down. Now these sequences are all outrageously over-the-top (and a little too reliant on CGI), but in the alternate universe of the action flick where the laws of physics don't apply (or haven't applied since the LETHAL WEAPON movies) they work just dandy.
(The only downside is Warner Bros.' insistence on the dreaded PG-13, which forces the filmmakers to cut the action-violence so close it's sometimes hard to tell who's slapping down whom -- as in the showdown at Mazur's bike shop.)
Another reason TORQUE works is because it's so short -- barely eighty-minutes long, and that's including end credits. With so little downtime between the action, the film rips along at a breakneck pace. This emphasizes the pic's strengths (the action, of course) and carries us along so quickly we don't realize how silly the whole thing is until we leave the theatre (and have already paid our eight, nine or ten bucks, depending on the zip code). For a dumb film, TORQUE's pretty smart.
One final warning: don't wait till TORQUE's on ActionMAX to catch it. This flick is only worth watching on the big screen, with sound pumped so loud fountains of blood fly from your ear canals. Viewing it pan-and-scan on a cramped TV with tinny speakers undercuts the action and the decibels, leaving you with nothing but the weak acting, trite plotting and mind-numbing dialogue of a Promark direct-to-video special. Ice Cube may be fun to watch, but he's not that fun!
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to [email protected].
(Note: For all those who missed my past reviews, they're now archived on Hollywoodlitsales.com. Just click the link on the main page and it'll take you to the Inner Sanctum. Love them or Hate them at your leisure!)
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
|
