Torque Movie Review:


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 bikercommunity.

Just forget "Torque" if you can.

(1 out of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

It's less than two week's into 2004 and already Torque has the distinction of revving up to be one of the worst movies we'll see (or hoepfully not) this year.Torque is a action biker film from Neal H. Moritz, the producer of The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, XXX, and S.W.A.T. This film is just beyond the suspension of disbelief and stupidity; it is loud, cheesy and never hits on any cylinders.

The somewhat story of Torque follows biker Cary Ford (The Ring’s Martin Henderson), a wrongfully accused criminal that has returned to his past biker
paradise after hiding away in Thailand. Six months prior to fleeing, Ford was in possession of two of the ruthless Henry James’ (Matt Schulze) bikes, which contained valuable drugs in the gas tanks. Ford hid the bikes and fled to Thailand with the FBI on his tail and James left furious. He has now return "to make things right," and to reconnect with his past love Shane (Just Married’s Monet Mazur). However, when James learns of Ford’s return he murders a rival biker hothead named Junior (Fredro Starr) and blames the murder on Ford. Now,
not only fleeing from the authorities and James, Junior’s aggressive brother Trey (Ice Cube), head of the biker gang "The Reapers," is looking for revenge
as well. Numerous chase scenes in ensue from the desert to the streets of Los Angeles as Ford once again tries ‘to make things right" and win back his old girlfriend.

This is a terrible action film full of many impossible stunts and chase scenes, which are so over the top that each calls for more laughs in disarray
than awe of spectacle. Torque is actually worse than the hideous Fast and the Furious films. Music video director Joseph Kahn supposedly wanted to
orchestrate his chase sequences and fights between the characters as reflective of a
comic book. Whatever he was thinking or tried to do, it just does not work. Though the characters are roaring down the road over 100 miles per hour on
these flashy motorcycles, they can still talk their heads off and have conversations with one another. The characters also find a way to continue their
conversations at these high speeds with their helmets on as well. Ice Cube’s character in fact takes a cell phone call while he is riding his motorcycle; he just easily attaches the phone to his helmet so he can talk to the person on the
other end of the line. Kahn also has silly montage moments throughout the film; such as once Ford arrives at a biker festival, many bikes, trophies, and more than anything wet half-naked women are plastered upon the screen. The weakest of Kahn’s choices are the dreadfully orchestrated action sequences. One contains Ford and Ice Cube’s character chasing one another on their bikes, while
on top of a moving train and another has two women conducting a fistfight while riding on their bikes.

There is also not much better to say about the script by Matt Johnson, except that it is the blueprint for the idiocy of this film. Of course each time a character hops on a motorcycle, their has to be a screeching peel out, or they just crash through a window to be cool, such as what Ford does at the end of the film. Besides having his characters take phone calls while riding on motorcycles, Johnson has Henry James receiving a cell phone call while he and his gang are all relieving themselves off the side of a cliff. The characters give insight about their bikes, such as the film’s special bike, which has a
helicopter engine and can get from 0 to 200 miles per hour in 10 seconds. The dialogue in the film is also nauseating, with characters uttering lines like "You ain’t gonna like how this ends." Johnson and the filmmakers also poke fun at themselves with Ford delivering the same line of dialogue from The Fast and the Furious of " I live my life a quarter of a mile at a time," then having another character replying "That’s stupidest thing I have ever heard." It does seem that the creators of this film had a sense of humor during the making of this film.

There is no explanation for Ice Cube to be in this film, he is far better than his weak role as an angered biker wanting revenge. His performance is
so over the top with his rage, which is reflective of the stereotypical roles he played early in his acting career. Let’s hope he fares better in Barbershop
2 next month. Martin Henderson, who played Naomi Watt’s estranged boyfriend in The Ring, is no leading man as Ford. Henderson delivers a wooden performance as the biker looking for compromise. Matt Schulze sports a very bad hair
cut as the villain Henry James and the beautiful Jamie Pressly sports many tattoos and piercings in her twisted turn as the villain’s girlfriend China. Monet Mazur also does not fare that well or add anything to the film in her role as the female lead Shane.

Torque is just an awful action filled film that comes nowhere close to being entertaining. More than anything it will make you wonder how a film like
this got made. Perhaps Torque will serve as a delight for fans of Neal H. Moritz’s past films or as a guilty pleasure. This film is unbearable and do not
expect it to make any noise in the box office.

Grade: F

Joseph C. Tucker

A better title would have been The Loud and the Ludicrous, as this noisy motorbike action movie strives to catch the energy of those fast, furious car flicks. If it took itself just a little less seriously it could have been great fun; but it isn't even coherent enough to work as a spoof.

The Western-inspired plot actually has promise: After several months in hiding, Ford (Henderson) comes back to town with his two loyal sidekicks (Hernandez and Lee) to settle an old score involving two drug-filled motorcycles he stole from a pair of vicious dealers (Schulze and Beesley). But the druggies turn the tables, and frame Ford for the murder of the hothead baby brother of a gang leader (Cube). So while Ford tries to rekindle the romance with the girl (Mazur) he left in the lurch, he also has to outwit the thugs, outrun the angry brother and stay out of reach of a pair of fashionista FBI agents (Scott and Machado).

The problem isn't the plot, it's the way music video veteran Kahn directs the film with a total disregard for storytelling. He subverts every scene with jangled camera work, unnecessarily choppy editing, deafening sound effects and gratuitous digital whizzery. All of which muddles and dilutes the film hopelessly. The actors struggle manfully to cope with the chaos; Henderson emerges above the din as a magnetic leading man in search of a decent director. The cast around him also have their moments, although Cube does little besides snarl at the camera, and Beesley really needs to stop trying to play tough guys. Everyone looks great in his or her formfitting leathers, but watching them is the only joy in the whole movie. It's in desperate need of both comic relief (the few attempts are seriously lame) and sex (or at least a bit of shirtlessness). It's such an illogical concoction that after the first few minutes, as you adjust your senses to the onslaught, you begin to wonder if this is a parody of boisterous action movies. No such luck.

Rich Cline

Returning to California after spending six months on the run in Thailand, Ford (Henderson) has finally come up with a plan that will clear his name. With the FBI on his trail for drug trafficking, he turns to his ex-girlfriend Shane (Mazur) for help but before he can put his plan in motion, he is framed by Henry James (Schulze), the leader of a biker gang and the real drug trafficker, for the death of rival gang leader Trey Wallace’s (Cube) brother. Now Ford has the authorities, a brother looking for revenge and Dalton on his tail, so the only thing he can do is grab his motorbike and ride as fast as he can for the border.

Imagine “The Fast and the Furious” on motorbikes but without any plot and some of the worse special effects you will ever see and you have “Torque”.

This is a movie that is all style and no substance but even then the style isn’t that great. The over reliance of computer generated special effects is far too evident in the chase sequences. Sometimes, especially during the final climatic chase, you feel like you are watching a computer game not a movie, the CG is that bad. You will find yourself laughing when you should be exhilarated, that’s how appalling his movie is.

After making a name for himself in the US remake of “The Ring”, Martin Henderson tries to enter the action market. While he has the looks and the swagger to make his way in the genre, he will need another shot to announce his entrance into the action hero fraternity. He does have leading man qualities but this movie is neither challenging nor believable enough to get him noticed.

Ice Cube switches from comedy to action quite easily however and he probably has the best part in the movie. You have to wonder why he took the role though because it does nothing to advance his career. Matthew Schulze seems to play the same character whenever he appears in a movie and this film is no exception. The man has such a limited range that the only way you could tell his performances apart are his different costumes and haircuts. Monet Mazur is just the eye-candy of the piece and a particularly nice one at that but she does do quite well in a completely over the top bike battle catfight with Jaime Pressly.

Torque is a lesser version of the Fast and the Furious movies and that is saying something. In fact director Joseph Khan could almost be accused of plagiarism with his only defence been “they are on motorbikes”. This is mindless pap at its most mindless that has no originality at all, offering nothing new to the genre. It certainly won’t make you want to go out and buy a super bike any time soon.

Star Rating = *

Jamie Kelwick

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