Furious Speed

“Let's go for a little ride.”
-Dom, “The Fast and the Furious”

With the price of gasoline rocketing (not to mention the cringe-worthy prices of those sleek and shiny sports cars we all dream of owning), it's no wonder that we common people turn to the big screen in hopes of getting our automobile fixes...er, fixed. The recent decade has seen an advance in movies featuring cars in all their glory, the two mentioned here heading the list.

The Fast and the Furious takes us into the underground culture of street racing: a world of seasoned drivers, hot babes, and equally erection-inducing automobiles. Set in an urban backdrop amidst the heat of rival gangs, the film uses a crime story as an excuse to display a wide array of juiced-up cars and blitz-crazy racing sequences.

The cast was well picked for their particular roles, with the possible exception of Paul Walker, who, as the screenplay goes, really didn’t have to do much acting. The sound track and mixing fits the bill, and gears the viewer for the action sequences. The plot seems reminiscent of many cop flicks— an undercover policeman getting too involved with those he’s investigating and the film throws in a red herring for good measure. It’s a rehash yes, but not an entirely bad attempt of one.

Besides the main feature of the movie, anyway, are the cars and the racing. The autos are souped up, flashy from the chassis to their shiny sinews underneath the hood. While some might nitpick on a couple of mechanical elements here and there, the film writers did their research and their consultants know their stuff. Not just for style, the featured cars perform too. Aside from elevating a normal street racing scenes up a notch, the movie also adds a considerable amount of horsepower to their chase sequences. To boot, the stunt drivers and coordinators perform a truck-jacking heist at 100mph seamlessly which deserves a seat in the annals of film history.

Overall, it’s fun to watch, if you’re really into cars and looking for a high-paced action flick.

Speed Racer has been getting a lot of flak since its opening in May this year. Based on the famous 1960s Japanese cartoon series of the same name, Speed Racer the movie is the Wachowski brothers' take on this racing story.

Set in a dizzying world of colors that will never be found in a rainbow, the Racer family featuring Speed goes up against an evil automobile-racing magnate who is determined, in all his purple resplendence, to stop them from winning. It's the classic good vs. bad, the little people vs. the big, greedy conglomerates. Speed sets out to prove that that racing isn't all dirty, aided by the mysterious Racer X, in gravity-defying races that run from landscapes covered in ice to sand-blasted deserts.

Most of the negative comments on Speed Racer come from the campiness of the movie, the overwhelmingly blinding set productions and the weaker-than-watered-down-soda storyline. True, the dialogue consisted mostly of bunches of clichés strung together and it was rather painful having to watch Mr. Royalton mumble off that speech on racing, but the plot did have its moments.

The races were highly imaginative: CGI employed for all its worth. While fun to watch and thrilling in its own right, there was some confusion as to what exactly what was going on in the race. Despite everything though, Speed Racer earns some points at least for sticking true to its cartoon original. It's a must-watch for those who loved the series, for comparison's sake if not for anything else.
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Freya is a contributor for various sites like www.villagesaintgeorge.com and www.cityofhawkesbury.com