Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Rent It - N o, Don't! w e nt y minutes into the screening of Torque, the latest and lamest in a thankfully sho rt string of sportbike-driven testosterone fests, 40 percent of the audience in the Flatbush Pavilion walked out. That left three of us. And I had to be there. It's that good. Cary Ford, the film 's protagonist, played by Martin Henderson, has the honor of de livering the dumbest line: "I live my life a quarter-mile at a time." Replies his tho ngwearing mechanic girlfriend, Shane (Monet Mazur), "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. " That's not true. The dumbest thing I heard was the cashier saying, "That' ll be $9.50. " You've seen the posters or the ads or the T previews. You're drawn in because there are sportbikes and guys in leathers that say "Carpe diem," Latin for "seize the day" as anyone who saw Robin Williams in Deod Poets Society knows. And some of the most egregious ad placement you'll ever find for a helmet company. Stay away. Run away. Rent Deod Poets Society. Sleep in. Overdose on Twinkies. We soon find out that Ford is a street racer who's recently returned from six months in Thailand, where he went to hide out after upsetting the Hellions - a local breed of dirty shirts - by stealing their Harleys, which appare ntly run on test tubes full of crystal methedrine, one of the more effective forms of speed, the iro ny of which is lost on almost everyone because it' s unin- tent ional. The gas tanks full of drugs are a shameless rip-off of the cocaine-filled gas tanks that fueled Captain America and Billy's cross-country odyssey in Eosy Rider. Rent Eosy Rider. Along the way Ford incurs the wrath of Trey, the gangsta leader of the "Reapers," an urban sport bike scourge with their own sweep truck and mascot, a pit bull named Dojo. Trey's face is fixed in a permanent sneer, probably as a result of being in this movie. Ice Cube , an actor of considerable skill who must have been in need of a paycheck between Barbershop movies, drew the short straw fo r Trey and displaysa range of emotions ranging from really pissed off to really, really pissed off. The reason Trey's boxers are twisted is that Henry, the mullet-headed drug-dealing head slimebucket of the Hellions, more of a dirty shirt than sportbike gang, framed Ford for the murder of a Reaper who came to his premature demise in a men's room . Not unlike Elvis. Still awake? Solving the crime is a pair of FBI agents, one so cartoonish that he'd make J. Edgar Hoover pull his dress over his eyes in disgust . The male wears branded T-shirts under a cheap suit with Converse sneakers , the woman with her hair fixed in corn rows. Essentially we have a modern Western, a chase movie where the good guy's mistaken for the bad guy by the very good guys because of what the very bad guys did. All in all, SI minutes of life-sapping drudgery that makes Gigli look like Citizen Kone. Which would be acceptable if the ridingwere good or interest ing or or iginal. It's not . On the street, Ford and his posse of two engage in a contest of who can ride most like the ISt h-place finisher in the 0 Superstock race at Summit Point. It was a three-way draw. Mostly they hang off and hold the bikes off to the side as ifthey were used diapers while using both lanes to remain vertical . The chase scenes , mostly going after Ford, take place on every imaginable (and a few unimaginable) surfaces. There's a fairing-banging scene on the street. There's the run through the palm desert on fully faired dirt bikes, including Trey's Triumph Daytona 955, which flies w ith the grace of a tarred duck. But the keeper is the chase scene along the roof of a moving passenger train. Our hero Ford uses a conveyor belt to jump on the roof - Trey soon to follow. For about 30 seconds, that was the most preposterous stunt. Then Ford jumps down between cars, opens the door with a whee lie, and rides up the aisle, skittling passengers like ten pins until he jumps out the door and off the train. Trey leaps off the front of the train, landing on the tracks, puncturing his tire and landing under the bike, the locomo tive bearing down like an avalanche. There's more on an L.A. freeway. Ford drives a stolen stock car out the back of a sem itrailer - don't ask • and drives long enough to catch up to his posse, whom he switches places with at speed. This being as predictable as sticky movie floors, the bad guys can't be far behind, and soon there's another dudly duel - Trey against Ford with lots of bodywork to account for. That leads to the beginning of the end, a meeting where the drugs are to be returned and everyone gets to ride into the sunset . It does n't quite end up that way. Instead we get Y2K, a long, sleek silver beast that's touted as the fastest bike in the world , a carbon-fiber frame supporting a Rolls-Royce helicopter engine with a 0-200 time of less than 10 seconds . But before we get to the early-'SOs "It's Eosy Rider meets Bullil!, but updated video-game-quality, computer-generated for the new millennium." chase finale comes the obligatory chick fight. "Sounds great. Tell me about the charac Shane against China , Henry 's brooding ters ." squeeze with enough metal in her face to "We have Ford, a swashbuckling kneemake a set of crankcases . dragger who stole some drug-filled Harleys, The proper medium for a chick fight is then split for six months in Thailand so that either pudding or cole slaw or both . But his girlfriend , Shane, a thong-wearing these two face off in a stoppie-and-wheelie mechanical whiz, doesn't get dragged into it duel in the middle of a produce market by Henry, the knuckle-dragger whose cusunder an elevated highway that ends as pretom Harleys Ford boosted, a maniacal gang dictably as everything else - China getting leader, drug dealer and murderer, though backfli pped into produce. Sadly, not cole different from Trey, the leader of an urban slaw. sportbike gang who, when he's not petting Hard as it is to believe, Y2K meets its his pit bull, Dojo, spends the whole movie match in Henry 's blown Harley, the pair growling like he has diaper rash mostly careening through the streets of L.A. like because of something China. Henry's lying, rejects from a 1987 beta version of "Grand sullen, saddle sore who's been pierced more .. . /'Theft Auto ." than an archery target , told the Gen.x I'd give away the ending, but I don't G-men . Heard enough?" / • remem ber it, except that the racer/bike "So the target audienc e' is larcenous thief literally rides into the sunset with his motorcycle_ rar.:e;" on the lam, moronic mechanic girlfriend and their two buddies, m urdering drug dealers, disgruntled urban heading for Mexico, where the laws again,·."- ,,' bikers with pets, body jewelry fetishists, and com mitt ing cr imes agalnsv - movie-gotng underwear models with tuning skills?" humanity aren't prosecu~~. "More or less." The movie aims s

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