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Full Throttled
Torque is a motorcycle movie even Jesse James couldn't fix.
Starring: Martin Henderson, Ice Cube, Monet Mazur, Matt Schulze, John Doe, Jaime Pressly
Directors: Joseph Kahn
Reviewed by Kevin Cunningham
THE PITCH: A motorcycle racer comes home to make right on old debts, and gets framed for the murder of another motorcycle's gang member. Motorcycle mayhem ensues.
IN OTHER WORDS: The Fast and the Furious meets the old video game Road Rage.
 Torque tries really hard to evoke the fun, sexy, somewhat silly and very cool attitudes of the canceled Fox series Fastlane. Unfortunately, it tries to hard, and the result is a spin out of a movie.
The film doesn't take very long to dive right into the convoluted story, which essentially involves a biker who took some drugs from the local dealer. He comes back to his home town to hook back up with his girl and make things right with the dealer, only the dealer sets him up for the murder of another bike gang member, and makes him a marked man. Yea, it plays out as stupid as it sounds.
It isn't helped by the general acting of the film. The entire cast plays the deal like it's too cool for school, but only Ice Cube actually fits that bill. He is far too talented to be playing stock characters in this schlock. The rest of the cast, well, at least they fit in this film. Martin Henderson, who plays the main character, seems to have been cast solely for his resemblance to Peter Facinelli, the star of the aforementioned Fastlane. Monet Mazur, the requisite love interest who hates the main character's guts, tries to play her part both cool as ice and fun and sexy flirtatious. Instead, she comes off as silly and just a little spooky. The villains are the usual mean looking rogues gallery, with a look that seems to be the offspring of some Hell's Angels and Uma Thurman from Kill Bill.
However, this film tries to carry itself by through style and action, and unfortunately, it fails in both. These motorcycle gangs aren't like the '60's gangs, with black leather, thick bushy beards, no showers in a week style. These are sleek, shiny colored leather wearing pretty boys riding streamlined bikes that look like they're going to transform into epilepsy inducing robots. Even the Inglewood street gang. It just never flies, and goes so far beyond the suspension of disbelief that it's easier to believe Godzilla onscreen. Either the rubber suit or CGI version.
The extras on the DVD don't make this film more palatable. You've got two commentaries, two storyboard-to-screen comparisons, and a standard music video that is little more than a collection of clips from the film. Perhaps the best feature is the theatrical trailer, which is essentially the movie in two minutes. It's just about as enjoyable as the entire thing.
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