Torque Review

"Torque" reviews

Movie

Torque

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-03-06 23:47:23

Rating

0.5/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

With a bad story, laughable dialogue and cartoonish action sequences, Torque--brought to you by The Fast and the Furious producer Neal H. Moritz--looks more like an 81-minute commercial for its cross-promotional 3D motorcycle racing game ''Maximum Torque'' than a movie.

Story

As Torque opens, we learn that biker Cary Ford (Martin Henderson) skipped town six months before without any explanation, leaving behind bewildered friends and a heartbroken girlfriend, Shane (Monet Mazur), who owns a local bike shop. ''Heard you were in Indochina,'' people ask when they see Ford, who came back to ''make things right.'' Before his disappearing act, Ford hid away a collection of motorcycles left in Shane's shop that belong to Henry (Matt Schulze), a drug dealer and leader of the Hellions biker gang, who wants his merchandise back--not surprising since he had stashed about $1 million worth of crystal meth in the gas tanks. Henry devises a plan to get the goods: He brutally kills a rival gang leader's younger brother and frames Ford for the murder, then promises an exchange--he'll get Ford off the hook if Ford tells him where the bikes are. This doesn't fly with our protagonist, who sees the drug-spiked bikes as his only insurance against Henry killing him outright. Now Ford has to prove his innocence while staying a step ahead of the gangs--and the cops--who are hot on his trail. This ridiculous film fails to answer glaring questions, such as why Ford split in the first place and why he stashed the bikes for six months. But the nonsensical storyline is accompanied by even lamer dialogue: The only thing worse than the constant references to Indochina (does anyone still use that term?) is Ford's correction that he was actually in Thailand.

Acting

If anything positive can be said about Torque it's that the bad guys in the cast manage to go out of their way to overdo their characters, delivering the memorably bad dialogue with the utmost passion and conviction. As rival gang leader Trey, Ice Cube never laughs or cracks a smile; he snarls his way through the entire film. But the best performance in terms of facial expressions has to be Jaime Pressly's China (no, not Indochina)--Henry's woman. China doesn't say a word until halfway through the film, but Pressly maximizes her character's screen presence by making her sadistically raunchy: She seductively licks her pierced vixen-red lips every time violence breaks out, be it a fight or, better yet, a murder. When she finally utters a line (something like, ''You messed with the wrong chick'') during a wheelie showdown with Shane, we at least know she means it. In contrast, heroes Mazur and Henderson are positively bland. Mazur's portrayal of Shane is a straight-up, tough-but-pretty girl who skids into one scene after another on her crotch rocket asking, ''Need a ride?'' and although Henderson's stringy, longhaired Ford looks the part of a biker boy, the actor doesn't give his character any quirky attributes the way Ice Cube and Pressly do--he isn't having fun in the role, and it shows. But the cast's biggest obstacle--besides, again, the awful dialogue--is the absurd leather getups they're forced to wear.

Direction

Prolific music video helmer Joseph Kahn makes his directorial debut with Torque, and his roots are showing--the film looks like a barrage of stylish music videos strung together. When Ford's pal is getting it on with a biker skank in a hotel room, for example, N.E.R.D.'s ''Lap Dance'' song blares in the background (''Oooh baby you want me? Well you can get this lap dance here for free...''). But the soundtrack has nothing on Torque's dialogue, and lines such as ''You got 'til sundown to bring back my bikes'' will have audiences laughing rather than shaking in their boots. Scribe Matt Johnson's attempted jibe at The Fast and the Furious is absolutely pathetic; in one scene, Ford repeats Vin Diesel's infamous, ''I live my life a quarter mile at a time,'' and Shane sneers something about that being the dumbest line she's ever heard. Right, because this dialogue is so intelligent it's earned the right to laugh at others'. It's a shame Kahn didn't look to Furious helmer Rob Cohen for tips about directing a film about fast things on wheels, instead of making fun--he could have learned how to make a cheesy film entertaining. Instead, Kahn delivers an action pic whose CGI effects more closely resemble a video game than reality and whose organizing principle is the three-minute music video, which doesn't lend itself to fleshed out storylines or interesting characters.

Bottom Line

If motorcycle racing is your thing, don't spend the money on the movie; get the game, where you'll be able to crank the gears and control the action, and any bad story and awful dialogue will be your own.

Movie

TORQUE

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-25 21:43:20

Provider

MRIB

Review

Motorbike movies are nothing new. The sight of Hopper and Fonda cruising the highway in Easy Rider is as iconic a film image as you can get and two-wheeled exploitation flicks have been around since the '50s.

Last year we were treated to the sight of Laurence Fishburne donning the leathers in Biker Boyz. This action-packed romp from music video director Joseph Kahn takes the genre up to full throttle and The Fast and The Furious speeds.

The plot is basic: Misunderstood biker dude Cary Ford (Martin Henderson) returns from a trip to Thailand to find half of Los Angeles after his neck. Among those eager to catch our shade-wearing hero are a shaggy FBI agent (Adam Scott) and the leader (Ice Cube) of a gang who blames Cary for the death of his brother. Not exactly the kind of welcome home you want.

It's loud, brash and adrenaline packed. A pretty obvious which genre for the director cut his teeth on. Fast cuts, outrageous stunts and a minimal script, keep the pace up, but it still feels considerably longer than it's 81 minute running time. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to you! No message here folks, Torque is as shallow as a kiddies paddling pool.

One-dimensional characters make the movie unashamedly all-action Now this it does that well. Bikes tear up LA and the coast and the plains making it onto the roof of a train at one point. Physics? This is Hollywood, who needs physics? Meanwhile eye candy comes in the form of Money Mazur and Jaime Pressly. Giving all petrolheads three forms to admire - the bikes come first.

No Easy Rider, Torque is enjoyable for what it is.

Torque Review