not as bad as it may look

i fully expected that this would be laughably bad, and in fact its like watching a fairly decent saturday morning tv movie. nothing great about it, but you'll sit through it and enjoy the ride.

the acting is at best soap opera quality; i'm not sure whats worse the psuedo-tv reporters or stallone trying to figure out what acting is.

the special effects are almost no where to be found. there are stunts that are overly slow and rather unmotivated. including both driving scenes and a fight.

the cars are just silly, and thats unfortunate as the movie is supposed to be about the deadly machines and their drivers. they're far more of an old school comic book dramatic then they are dangerous looking. they bounce around like go carts with spraypaint and clown car appendages. its difficult to believe that if these cars hit someone, which is how the scoring for the race is done, that they would not actually completely fall apart.

all in all its a quick plot: racers kill people for points as they compete against each other. most of the racers die by the end. and this 'sport' has become a national pride. and there is a resistance group trying to undermine and eliminate the race by infiltrating it. and of course a small bit of a love story. thats about it.

what hurts the movie the most, despite lackluster performances and low budget thrills which are perfectly watchable, is one of the main discoveries of the story. the main character, frankenstein, who has been surgically rebuilt after previous races, keeps his hand gloved. until its revealed to his navigator....as a visual pun. what? i thought the scene of stallone shooting a machine gun into a crowd without killing people was an odd mistake of something that perhaps was cut or never filmed and then had to be glanced over in the final sequence. but a "hand grenade" that is a literal hand with a grenade (half showing) built onto it...thats just lame!




6/10