Rather weak crime movie with superficial street racing elements

Rating: 5/10 (27 April 2006)

In an ironic sense, this movie is like much of the car tuning business these days. That is, cheap and fake, like the plastic hood pin replicas you attach on the hood with foam tape.
This movie has plenty of things to make a car enthusiast cringe; the way which this movie bunches car tuning, street racing and organized crime tightly together isn't exactly the most pleasing approach. The stuff about double-clutching, failing to use proper terms and very loose involvement on events in a race gives an impression the writer gained all his knowledge about race driving out of a five-point bulletin list on how to drive a Nascar racer. Finally, the movie practically drops out of street racing premise after 1/4th way through.
The street racing theme is only a facade to a substandard crime movie. It's soon obvious the movie is more about blasting away with guns than racing on the streets. Making a distinct good guy - bad guy -scenario and thus having the police to sanction the main character's actions, the movie did not have to deal with the legal and moral issues of street racing or the dangers involved. Pure street racing as such would probably have been too difficult a subject to the writer and too controversial for the producers, so they put guns, explosions, hi-jackers and an oriental gangster mob into the movie, none of which really belongs (well, except perhaps the gangster bunch, but they were made OTT, big time).
The race scenes aren't that well made either; they're about driving a straight line and when to hit the nitrous (or Nnnaaawwwzzz as it's called in the movie) for victory. It's not about who's the best driver, it's about who has the most $$$'s under the hood. There's not enough car stuff to keep enthusiasts interested, the plot pretty much sucks rocks through a garden hose and the bulk of the movie is generic crime movie material. The latter half of the movie is almost completely disconnected from the first, the two elements (racing and crime) support each other in a truly superficial way, and the dialog is awkward.