[33421]

I haven't even seen the movie, but the trailers are so pathetic there seems little point. Stoppies and 360's on top of a high speed train? Drop offs from said train at speed onto railroad tracks... with sportbike suspension?



If I want to see a good motorcycle movie, I'll just throw on my re-mastered edition DVD of 'The Great Escape'. At least the stunts are real and the actor who did most of the riding knew how.

 

[BykerGeek]

In the new FHM magazine, there is a small segment on the Y2K turbine bike and a sidebar with Ice Cube. I don't know if the reporter misunderstood him but it slipped the fact check since he is commenting on the Triumph 959 he rode in the movie. The last Triumph I owned was a 955 and it was pretty memorable. That said enuf4me.

 

[39777]

Luckily, we won't be cursed with having this movie in the theaters for long. When I came out of Return of the King this weekend, I saw a group of people leaving Torque less then a half an hour after it started.

 

[39220]

Unfortunately I think this is the experience we are going to get from Hollywood for a long time, whether it is motorcycles, cars, jet fighters, orcs and elves, etc. Hollywood is enamored with CGI and grossly over-the-top story lines. In my opinion, CGI is doing as much to hurt movies as it is helping them. Does anyone deny the jet fighter scenes in Top Gun blew away the jet fighter scene from Behind enemy lines or Independence Day? Are the car chase scenes in Fast and Furious any better than the scene from Bullet? And an obvious one, are the motorcycle scenes in Torque anywhere close to as good as The Great Escape?



To me none of these are close and it's the CGI that ruined them. Hollywood now has the technology to be outrageously stupid where as before when they relied on real people and vehicles and were bound by the real laws of physics and the need to return the stuntman/woman home relatively healthy. Isn't a professional rider on/in any vehicle exciting enough to watch especially in the context of even an average story? Ronin w/Robert Deniro was an okay movie but the car chase scenes were great. It's the McDonalds effect in everything out of Hollywood has to be Biggie Size. I'm not saying movies need to be based 100% in reality but if it's kept in the 80 percentile of believability we might enjoy movies even like Torque a little more. Instead we can't express enough how silly they come across.



Some movies I think that have good motorcycle and car scenes are:



The Italian Job (I can forgive the Mini’s being so fast and indestructible. At least they were real even if they destroyed 20 or 30 of them to make the movie. They threw in some Beemer’s for us motorcycle fans).



I can’t remember the name but one of the early Jackie Chan movies has some great dirt bike stunts in it. One where the stuntman jumps it on a moving train. You have to see the outtakes to appreciate that one fully.



The second Matrix (The movie was only saved by the Ducati highway chase and the fact that a real stunt woman rode a real motorcycle. I know the scene was doctored up but it was real enough to be a blast to watch.)



On Any Sunday, The Great Escape (dub!), Bullet, Le Mans . McQueen rocked like no one has since.



Girl On A Motorcycle (Campy psychedelic movie but it does have a girl on a motorcycle. And you get to see some vintage bikes before they were vintage. Don’t know about the movie itself though).



And finally can the movie/documentary Faster get here (Chicago) fast enough? Has anyone seen this or know if it is showing to the general public yet?

 

[opie]

Wake up and smell the graphic novel.

You are all missing it. Hearing you lament this movie's non-stop motorcycling inaccuracies and over-exaggerations is like hearing technical experts critically evaluate "Batman" or "Speed Racer". Or perhaps like having a scholar with a Doctorate in English deplore the grammatical weakness and shaky linguistic foundation of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure". It was a COMIC STRIP!!! The stunts and scenes weren't supposed to be REAL!!! It was meant to be a high speed, faster than life, cliche ridden (no pun intended) good vs. evil moto-adventure, with a few well-forecast plot turns, and the bad guy getting his ass kicked in the end. If the entire movie didn't convince you of this, the super-nitro-JayLeno-ultra-fast-jetbike-warp speed chase scene near the end was your last big fookin' clue. You go to a movie like this to suspend disbelief, letting the carnival flood your senses while you munch your popcorn and yell, "HIT ME!!!" That's what you pay for. If you went to this movie planning on seeing a motorcycling, documentary-styled, reality show, then you didn't take a very good look at the movie poster now, did you. I suppose you think that the Road Warrior wasn't very realistic either. You're just sad.

 

[grandmasta-flash]

Quote:

"I can’t remember the name but one of the early Jackie Chan movies has some great dirt bike stunts in it. One where the stuntman jumps it on a moving train. You have to see the outtakes to appreciate that one fully."



The movie: Supercop aka. Police Story III

If you wanna see good stunts, just pick any jackie chans movie. All real *****, no FX.



The best motorcycle movie in recent years (that I've seen):

Full Throttle

It's a Hong Kong movie, 100% real stunts, road/canyon racing. It's still cheesy, guy meets girl, girl is annoyed by boy's riding habit "It's too dangerous, I don't wanna see you die(in tears). But compared to Biker Boyz or Torque, it's an oscar contender.

 

[wwalkersd]

Re: Wake up and smell the graphic novel.

Yup. You got it. This movie is aimed at a generation raised on video games. This kind of physics-defying action is what they're programmed to expect, nay, demand.

Sadly, though, it appears that this movie fails even the vid-kid's standards for plot and content.

 

[34206]

Re: Wake up and smell the graphic novel.

Did they use CGI in Road Warrior? I must have missed it.

 

[MRALLCAPS]

DAT WUZ DOPE!

AN' YA'LL ARE JUST A BUNCH A' PUSSIEZ. I CAN DO ALL THAT STUFF I SAW IN THE MOVIE! IN FACT, I'M DOIN' IT RIGHT NOW- VROOOOOM! BWAAAAAAAAH! BWAAAAAAAAAH! BWAAAAAAAAAH! SPROIIIIIIIIIIIG! YAAAAAAAH! KER-BOOOOM! EIEEEEEEEEE!

 

[dogstar]

I tried to be good through the entire movie by not pointing out all of the inaccuracies in the movie, but really guys:

1. People talking to each other at full speed with no chatter box or similar equipment?

2. Being able to hear a cell phone while riding

3. Stoppies on a street bike off road

4. The entire train sequence

5. The entire girl fight sequence

6. Riding a turbine bike that fast and not having your unhelmeted face peeled off by wind blast

7. A Triumph TT600 keeping up with 1000's



I could go on, but I fear my hand will cramp. I truly feel that that was 136 minutes out of my life that I will see again, and would desperatly like to have back. I wonder if The Great Escape is for rent at Blockbuster?

 

[cruiz-euro]

I haven't seen the Torque, and never will, but I can assure you this movie can not be as bad as "Driven". Also rottentomatoes.com has 19% positive reviews to Torque and 14% to Driven.



To me, this CART world imitating complete fiasco is the worst film ever. Penned by Stallone himself, it is full of cliches and ABSOLUTELY INANE action.



How 'bout this for a typical CART racing incident: In the heat of the race a guy drives off the track and ends up in a lake drowning. Unfortunately he must have been driven quite a bit wide since he's in the middle of the wilderness and there is nobody to save him. Only a fellow competitor, the worst enemy, after a valiant off-road driving in his open wheeler, gets to the scene and saves the guy just before the lake bursts into flames, meanwhile a TV crew copter shoots the thing for the whole world to see. Talk about big drama.



- cruiz-euro

 

[grubz916]

yeah I agree, driven totally sux. At the very least they could have given the German dude a more original name than Brandenburg!! That took a lot of thought to concieve.

 

[seruzawa]

Spot on. How about the stupid remake of "Gone in 60 Seconds?" The ridiculous chase scenes which were created by CGI and editing tricks made the whole thing a yawn.



When you watch good stunts, where it's actually actual people doing actual things with actual vehicles, you know that there was a lot of real time and effort put into the production. CGI stuntsd are just lazy movie making.



It's why Jackie Chan's schlocky movies are far more exciting than yawners like "Matrix Reloaded".

 

[3793]

Why is everyone so upset ! I went through the process of critisizing movies based on deviation from reality when I was 12 regarding guns, karate, and the laws of physics (gravity, thermodynamics, etc..) Film makers have no

intention of promoting facts but want to sell tickets. The only part that bothers me about these movies is that some nitwit will believe what they see and A. try it (squids, sideways gun shooters, etc..) or B. legislate something they saw in a movie that they think they need to protect us from.

 

[43179]

I've only seen the trailers-but it doesn't look like a good comic strip, never mind a movie about motorcycles.



On the other hand, McQueen's LeMans is a great movie about racing, but a lousy "movie" that would have sunk to total oblivion if he hadn't been involved.



Real chase scenes with "practical" stunts as opposed to CGI etc. are a lot more interesting and can even carry a film-see the original "Italian Job".



Have you seen LeLouche's "C'Etait une Rendezvous"?

 

[grubz916]

I agree with y'all MOFO's, CGI nowadays generally sux. I thought Behind Enemy Lines was a good movie ruined by the stupid slo-mo shots of jets exploding and people being flung thru the air. Completely overdone. Plus that gangsta-rappin' Bosnian (or Slovakian?) kid annoyed me



I'll probably end up renting Torque when it comes on DVD, but I already know what to expect. Half-baked storylines seemingly written to tie together all the CGI & cliches.

O well, I guess it won't matter since I'll be drunk.

 

[21684]

Two thumbs up.

I laughed, I cried. It was a poignant film for the times. I'll see this film over and over again whenever I need to be uplifted and made happy again. The social message alone is worth twice the price of admission. I smell Oscar all over this masterpiece.

 

[seruzawa]

What a snoozefest

"Driven" to suicide is more like it. They should've made the German guy a clone of Hitler and his pit crew could have been reincarnations of Goebbels, Himmler, Goering and Bormann. He could have been winning races because of devlishly clever sabotage.

And they should have had Estella Warren walking around nude with absolutely no spoken dialogue for her. Or better yet since dialogue is not required use Laetitia Casta.

Campy, you bet, but it wouldn't have been near the borefest.

For real Stallone car race action rent Deathrace 2000. Now there's a real classic!

 

[seruzawa]

Re: Two thumbs up.

Monet Masur is certainly to be associated with being uplifted.

 

[1163]

"...just pick any jackie chans movie."



That is except for "The Tuxedo". CGI at its worst.