what the hell was that?!

Rating: 1/10 (14 February 2002)

I'll tell you what ... THE worst movie ever made. I can't even believe I paid the $5 to rent this piece of DVD-Trash and I feel even worse for those who paid much more to see it in the theatre.
Where to begin, where to begin. Why not start with the plot, since people here keep saying it doesn't matter. Okay okay, so there actually was no plot, but that's not going to stop me from ranting. This movie had no focus or direction. In the beginning it's this kid wanting to be a street racer. Then he's a cop trying to stop an electronics theft ring. Then it's some half baked attempt at a love story ala Romeo & Juliet with the kid and the family who doesn't accept him. Then it's a story about ripping off some truck. Oh ya, and the occasional car race. And as if that couldn't get any better, this movie even comes complete with an evil Chinese syndicate(could we get any more stereotypical????).
I guess I should talk about the cast now. Um ... ya, what an amazing cast of stellar bad-actors. Yeesh! Although I suppose it's not all their fault (well, except for Vin Diesel), most of the blame belongs to the awful script and terrible dialogue. I watched Jordana Brewster for 3 years on As The World Turns, she's a good actress. She was great over on ATWT. But here... the height of her performance is the frequent use of "Stop the bulls&@% !!!!". Paul Walker, he may be good, he may not be. You can hardly judge by this movie and I havent seen him in anything else. To me, it seemed like a classic case of casting based upon looks.
Speaking of bad dialogue. The absolute worst element in this movie was all the male ego BS. The worst example of this was the ending scene with Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. Paul Walker's character, the cop (just thought I'd reiterate this) was chasing down Vin Diesel's character in one of the movie's few car chases. Diesel's car is smashed into by a truck and the car's totaled. Walker pulls his gun on him and looks like he's going to do his job and arrest him. But what does he do? Hands him the keys to his car and says "I still owe you a 60 second car" and lets him ride off. Then the movie ends. Hopefully, what we didn't see was Walker's character suspended from the force, followed by a hearing, followed by an arrest and sentencing for Aiding and Abetting.
Now this wouldn't be a good review if I didn't mention the car stuff. Firstly I found it extremely annoying that this movie threw in so much car gibberish that the average movie goer like myself had absolutely no clue what was being said. Second, the car stunts were few and extremely lacking in excitement. How exciting is it to see a car go in a straight line? Not very. How exciting is it to see 5 cars try and rob an 18 Wheeler? It probably was, but by that point in the movie I simply didn't care. And also... if the truck driver is shooting at you with a rifle ... why are you still chasing him? To save some redneck who most of the characters don't seem to like, and end up killing two of the people you do like?
I could go on and on about the flaws and annoyances of this movie ... but I don't have the time. I like action movies ... when they're GOOD. But this was not good, not by a long shot.