Get ready to feel the need for speed: Martin Henderson and Ice Cube star as mismatched bikers in Torque, a Fast And The Furious clone that's as enjoyable as it is dumb. Delivering the (second-hand) goods far better than the self-important Biker Boyz, director Joseph Kahn's popcorn flick is blessed with a tongue-in-cheek script, plenty of burning-rubber chases, and a sense of its own ridiculousness. Slick and shameless, it's the most guilt-wrapped pleasure of the year.
Returning home after skipping town in the middle of a drug deal, hardcore biker Ford (Henderson) is in deep trouble. His old lady, Shane (Monet Mazur), wants to bust his balls; his Hell's Angel business partner (Matt Schulze) wants to bust his head open; and the FBI just want to bust him plain and simple. When he's framed for the murder of Junior, the brother of badass biker gang leader Trey (Ice Cube), Ford finds himself in a whole new world of pain.
"EVERY EXPLOITATION MOVIE CLICHÉ"
Full of chrome and hot leather, fast-cutting MTV visuals, a Goth chick villainess (Jaime Pressly), butterfly knives, and roaring exhausts, Torque throws together every possible exploitation movie cliché and revs them up until they internally combust. Then there's the gaudy coloured "crotch rockets" themselves, the Evel Knievel-style train stunt, a girl-on-girl motorcycle duel, and the Y2K superbike that travels at 250 mph (and comes complete with CGI effects apparently pinched from a PlayStation game).
Cult classic it ain't, but fans of trash cinema will get a kick out of it - not least because it has the guts to take on the infinitely superior Fast And The Furious, throwing down the gauntlet to that kit car flick with wild abandon. "I live my life a quarter mile at a time," says Ford in a po-faced parody of Vin Diesel's infamous direlogue. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard," snaps Shane with a glint in her eye. Touch´ indeed.
Torque (2004)
