Directed by: Sidney J. Furie
I don’t know how many of you are
car chase scene addicts – I sure am! A car chase in a movie is like a great
instrumental break in a rock song – it tends to overshadow everything else and
I always wish there was more of it. Take for example the 1972 film Fear is the Key. It begins with a
mindblowingly great (and long) car chase, but the rest wasn’t that good. In Bullit, which was of course a great
film, car chase scene was the best part, too.
Cool!
So what if someone made a movie
consisting entirely of car chase(s)? Road
Rage is that movie! Unfortunately, it’s really horrible. Okay, before we
get into details, to respond to a question you’re asking – yes, of course,
there’s Duel, a brilliant film, one
that certainly predates Road Rage and serves as an obvious inspiration for it.
However, Duel was primarily a thriller (or even horror), not an action movie. The
main character being pursued for no reason by something large and terrifying
and seemingly undestructible is a theme that has more in common with, say, Halloween than your regular car chase
movies.
Cool!
As much as I’d prefer to continue
writing about Spielberg/Matheson’s masterpiece, sadly, we have to turn our
attention to Road Rage, which, as I said, is a real action movie with lots of
car chases and crashes. Similar to Duel, the main protagonists get into trouble
straight away and are being chased to the very end. Everything else is
different. First of all, there is no mystery about the pursuer’s identity –
Casper Van Dien and his annoying female sidekick Sonia are being chased by her
idiotic ex-boyfriend and his two equally idiotic friends. All three of them are
dumb jocks (actually, two of them are, I don’t know about the third one) who
look like they couldn’t tie their shoelaces, which is extremely disappointing
especially if we, again, remember Duel and its mysterious antagonist whose face
we never see.
Not cool!
Be that as it may, those three
morons for some reason always appear on our heroes’ tail when they least expect
it. They are never too upset about their truck exploding or falling off the
side of the road or other similar minor annoyances. For example, they try to
attack them on a gas station, hit a gas pump instead, there’s a big explosion,
the truck is totally destroyed, but minutes later it’s as good as new. I don’t
understand if they got a new one, or quickly fixed the one that exploded or...
For a movie with such a simple story, it sure has its share of whatthehell
moments.
Cool!
So, anyway, how the heck have
they managed to ruin such a great and simple idea? Surely, a few continuity
errors can’t be such a big issue. Well, the main problem is the screenwriter,
who should be shot repeatedly in the head before he “writes” anything else
(unfortunately, this movie is more than 10 years old and in the meantime he has
“written” quite a few of them, which I’ll try my best to avoid). The
characterization is absolutely horrible and the dialogs are the worst. Almost
everyone has two or three (not very impressive) lines that they repeat over and
over until you get sick. Take the main bad guy, the ex-boyfriend. Aside from
looking like a complete dork, he constantly repeats how he loves Sonia.
Remember, this is happening at the same time while he’s trying to kill her. His
fat sidekick (the non-jock one) only cares about his truck not being damaged so
it’s “You scratched my truck! Don’t hit my truck! You’ll ruin my truck! Don’t
ruin my truck!” over and over and over again. As a bonus, his acting (if you
can call it that) is terrible.
Cool!
Sonia is really cute and while
her conversations with Casper are made of the worst clichés ever (“You are a rich girl! You
have everything!” “No, I don’t! My life sucks!” “No, it doesn’t!” “I love
stars!” etc) it’s all relatively bearable until about halfway through the film
when she finally loses her grip and starts yelling “I want to talk to him! Let
me talk to him! Why is this happening to us? I wish I was dead! Let me die! I
want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening? I want to die!”
and similar. You get the idea. Anyone less cool than Casper would’ve probably
thrown her out of the damn car under her stupid ex-boyfriend’s wheels. Anyway,
Casper’s the only one that manages to fight the idiotic script and come out
with some dignity left.
Not cool!
Or is he? There’s a scene when he
and Sonia are out of gas and they stop a ranger (played by Catherine Oxenberg)
to try to get a ride. The bad guys appear and immediately attack, Catherine
gets out of the car and shoots at them, but they hit her and she rolls over to
the side of the road. So, surely, our heroes immediately go there and help her,
right? Wrong! They take her car and get the hell out of there without even
turning their heads to see if she’s alive! And I presume we are supposed to
root for them? Remember, this is Casper’s wife
we are talking about! He probably had a lot of explaining (and dish
washing!) to do to make up for that. If anyone cares, the ranger apparently did
survive, but she didn’t appear again. Her sole purpose was to provide a new car
after Casper’s limousine ran out of gas.
Cool!
Also, one of the first scenes in
the movie is Casper being headbutted by that loser ex-boyfriend, which sucks
big time. Johnny Rico would certainly have none of that!
Not cool!
Fortunately, the movie is not
completely unwatchable. The action scenes are pretty cool, especially at the
beginning, but there’s also some nice car chasing through the beautiful
Canadian country at the end. Too bad they didn’t hire someone at least
competent to write the script. Hell, I think even Kevin Smith would have
written it better!
No comments:
Post a Comment