 For a story written by Stallone
and directed by action specialist Renny Harlin, this piece has such little to
recommend it that I won't. Well, almost won't.
In fact, the story is ancient,
the characters are paper thin, the conflict is laughable, and the competition
pointless. It is soaked through with cliches, and every opportunity to make a
cruel point about the real world is thrown away with bleeding heart
sympathy.
Right in the middle of the film,
the self destructive Young Turk steals a prototype 1000HP car, and races out of
the launch party. Stallone, seasoned veteran who threw it all away once (of
course) RACES AFTER HIM IN THE PROTOTYPE'S TWIN.
Did I mention they are in
downtown CHICAGO????
I must admit, after that crackpot
incident about 1:30 into the flick, I actually started to like the film. I
don't know why, really. Maybe I just crashed after a long day.
I enjoyed some of the racing, and
the effects were nice (I use the same software they used to make the 3-D cars
and explosions, and it is SWEEEEEEEET.) So I enjoyed it.
See this at your own risk. You
might like it a little too.
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Cliche's of the Grand Prix Circuit
This is an exercise to see how many
cliche's I can remember from the film, which I saw a week
ago.
1. Young driver who
won't listen
2. Older driver who
won't listen, but was great anyway
3. Drivers from
different nations (forced diversity)
4. German/Nordic bad
guy with high squeaky voice
5. Girlfriend who
changes men like tires.
6. Evil/tough racecar
manager
7. Brother/career
manager who does not listen to young Turk.
8. Car wreck part
flying in slow motion (actually pretty good)
9. Camera shots of
race crowds
10. Race Announcers
11. Injured racer high
fiving girlfriend at end (in hospital bed)
12. Young Turk
quitting
13. Evil girlfriend
fighting with ex husband's new girlfriend
14. Burt Reynolds (not
too bad)
15. Sly Stallone (not
too bad)
16. Calling old guard
back into action
17. People quitting.
(The way they did it)
18. People getting
fired.
19. Champagne
victory.
There is more, but as
I said, I started to like it a little after about 90 minutes. Sigh. With all of
the talent piled on this, how could it be so dull? At least it is not as bad as
Pushing Tin
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