Torque By Dean Kish
You escort your slick two-wheeled engine of doom up to the line. You strap on your helmet as you snarl at your competitor. The sun reflects off your slick leather ensemble as you glide your leg over the mean machine's hardened leather seat. Your hands grasp the handles as you hear a faint squeak of your leather gloves. You are ready for combat.
The revving commences and in a flash you hope to leave your competitor a victim at the line. But instead you watch as your bike stalls and your enemy screeches away. The name of your enemy is `The Fast & the Furious' and you are just left being the `The Fake & the Scriptless'.
And that about sums up the new action film, Torque, which is brought to you by the same producers who did `The Fast & the Furious' and `XXX'.
In the loose-meat storyline housed within `Torque', we find rebel biker Cary Ford (Martin Henderson) returning to his hometown to face his past demons and reclaim the woman (Monet Mazur) he loves. Ford must first face down a ruthless FBI agent (Adam Scott) and two biker rivals (Ice Cube and Matt Schulze).
The one-note storyline allows for slick two-dimensional performances from the film's leads and forgettable one-dimensional ones from the supporting cast which includes B-movie veterans Schulze and Jaime Pressly.
There are a lot of western and rebel references as the recent world of the biker never seems to translate well to screen. These guys don't drive for the `need for speed' or celebrate in their rebellion but instead they just clunk around like they were lost on paper which it is no surprise that this is the first script from screenwriter Matt Johnson. There are oodles of rookie mistakes in this one.
I kind of felt sorry for some of the actors lost in this film like Henderson, Pressly, Mazur and of course under-rated Max Beesley who once more finds himself in an awful project.
As a B-film I did find some great belly-laughs like at the biker chick showdown between Mazur and Pressly which is probably the worst game of chicken on celluloid. And Pressly's biker chick character is ripped right from a re-run of `Black Scorpion'. It had to be with all that lip lickin'. Roger Corman would adore that character.
I do have to admit that the stunts and some of the `filled-to-the-brim' cheese was fun but for the most part `Torque' should and will be an embarrassment to both the outlaw and speed-freak biker community.
Just forget `Torque' if you can. (1 out of 5) So Says the Soothsayer. (dwkish@shaw.ca)
You escort your slick two-wheeled engine of doom up to the line. You strap on your helmet as you snarl at your competitor. The sun reflects off your slick leather ensemble as you glide your leg over the mean machine's hardened leather seat. Your hands grasp the handles as you hear a faint squeak of your leather gloves. You are ready for combat.
The revving commences and in a flash you hope to leave your competitor a victim at the line. But instead you watch as your bike stalls and your enemy screeches away. The name of your enemy is `The Fast & the Furious' and you are just left being the `The Fake & the Scriptless'.
And that about sums up the new action film, Torque, which is brought to you by the same producers who did `The Fast & the Furious' and `XXX'.
In the loose-meat storyline housed within `Torque', we find rebel biker Cary Ford (Martin Henderson) returning to his hometown to face his past demons and reclaim the woman (Monet Mazur) he loves. Ford must first face down a ruthless FBI agent (Adam Scott) and two biker rivals (Ice Cube and Matt Schulze).
The one-note storyline allows for slick two-dimensional performances from the film's leads and forgettable one-dimensional ones from the supporting cast which includes B-movie veterans Schulze and Jaime Pressly.
There are a lot of western and rebel references as the recent world of the biker never seems to translate well to screen. These guys don't drive for the `need for speed' or celebrate in their rebellion but instead they just clunk around like they were lost on paper which it is no surprise that this is the first script from screenwriter Matt Johnson. There are oodles of rookie mistakes in this one.
I kind of felt sorry for some of the actors lost in this film like Henderson, Pressly, Mazur and of course under-rated Max Beesley who once more finds himself in an awful project.
As a B-film I did find some great belly-laughs like at the biker chick showdown between Mazur and Pressly which is probably the worst game of chicken on celluloid. And Pressly's biker chick character is ripped right from a re-run of `Black Scorpion'. It had to be with all that lip lickin'. Roger Corman would adore that character.
I do have to admit that the stunts and some of the `filled-to-the-brim' cheese was fun but for the most part `Torque' should and will be an embarrassment to both the outlaw and speed-freak biker community.
Just forget `Torque' if you can. (1 out of 5) So Says the Soothsayer. (dwkish@shaw.ca)