Redline
(2007)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C- Film: C
It is
always something and something increasingly rare when a relatively large budget
film is made by independent producers with no studio backing or guarantee that
the film with get distributed, let alone do well. The amusing recent example is Andy Cheng’s Redline, an unintentionally funny
attempt to rip-off and capitalize on films like Driven (the Sylvester Stallone/Rennie Harlin bomb), the 2 Fast 2 Furious films, the dreadful Gone In 60 Seconds remake and any other
streetcar racing film or videogame. At
least they have the best “hot chick” ratio.
The
beautiful Najda Bjorlin (they got that one right) stars and actually narrates
(awkwardly) the happenings with con artists, wannabes and powerful, tired old
money who make the race happen. With
some killing, fighting (often senselessly out of nowhere) and even kidnapping,
the real reason for this film is that superexoticars can race illegally down streets,
at high speeds and sometimes wreck. It
is almost as clichéd as the slow motion and digital used to unspectacular
effect.
Nathan
Phillips, Angus Macfadyen, Tim Matheson and an in-a-strange-element Eddie
Griffin co-star with the real stars of the film: half-naked women and the
cars. It is not as pretentious or
politically correct as the films it blatantly imitates, but they do zero with
that freedom except show more women. The
actors seem to be having a good time of some sort, but in never translates into
a good film and Robert Foreman’s screenplay seems to have churned out of a bad
PC software program.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.85 X 1 image was shot by the great Bill Butler, A.S.C., who makes this
look less phony than the films imitated, but that does not make it
Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix
either. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
actually very good to the point that Genius and the filmmakers should have
included a DTS 5.1 version on this disc, for it could have had demonstration
moments. Klaus Baldet did the theme song
and the rest is an Ian Honeyman/Andrew Raiher mixed bag. Extras include the original theatrical
trailer from Chicago Films, a making of featurette and brief piece of promo for
the film at a recent L.A. auto show.
With some
more ambition, originality and less lazy humor, this could have been the best
film of the cycle easily, but the sheer inexperience of everyone but Butler and
the distribution company hold it back.
Still, this is as good as anything else in what is one of the silliest
cycles of filmmaking in recent memory, no mater the hits produced. This was not one of them, but we’ll see if it
gets a following on DVD.
- Nicholas Sheffo
