Reviews

Films

Torque

Directed by Joseph Kahn, starring Martin Henderson, Ice Cube

In Torque's most hilarious scene, two biker chicks balance their two-wheeled beasts on their back wheels like rearing horses, and proceed to trade blows with their front wheels. Countless laws of physics and common sense are broken in this sequence alone and that's without mentioning the blatant brand promotion in the background. This is dazzlingly dumb stuff, which makes the Fast and the Furious movies (which share Torque's producer Neal H Moritz) seem like rocket science.

The story follows Ford (Martin Henderson), a biker who wants to set things right after fleeing from the law. He wants his old girlfriend back, his buddies beside him and his name cleared after being wrongly accused of peddling drugs. The man responsible for the illicit substances, whose name is Henry James (ha!) is a gang leader who wants his product back and so he frames Ford for the murder of another gang leader's (Ice Cube) brother. Ford, his sidekicks and lady-friend then hit the road with many in hot pursuit.

Admittedly, this is a hoot for those who like to laugh at action movies that are so staggeringly atrocious, you have to believe they were deliberately made so. Torque is a cartoon, an overlong rock film clip and a cast of boy band wannabes all rolled into one. The supposedly bad bikers all look as though they spend hours in front of the mirror everyday, like middle-aged ex-members of New Kids on the Block trying to go gritty. Lead actor Henderson appears downright embarrassed throughout and Ice Cube again beats the living daylights out of his own credibility.

Ben Davey

Hang 'Em High

Directed by Ted Post, starring Clint Eastwood, Ed Begley

By the time that Clint Eastwood took the lead role in this Ted Post-directed Western he had already carved an indelible mark on the Western genre, starring as The Man With No Name in several Sergio Leone films. These Spaghetti Westerns, such as A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, were morally ambiguous and far bloodier than anything John Wayne had anything to do with. So with Hang 'Em High, Eastwood's first US Western, the audience may have had some idea about what was on the menu: a serve of the old West, without the sugar coating.

When we first meet Jed Cooper (Eastwood), he is driving cattle across a river. He is soon met by a lynch mob that strings Jed up for being in possession of allegedly stolen cattle. Jed is left to die but a lawman cuts him down just in time and the wronged man is soon released from custody by the district judge (Ed Begley). A former Marshall, Jed is then deputized and sets out to find the crooked men who left him for dead. Oh, and I should also mention that there's a love interest and several life-threatening situations.

Ted Post had already worked with Eastwood during the star's television days. Here the director shows just how closely he studied the Leone movies by replicating a lot of the Italian director's idiosyncratic techniques. You get the close up, the rapid zoom and even the overwrought soundtrack. However, where Leone was verging on high camp, Hang 'Em High takes an earnest route and even finds time to subtly condemn capital punishment. As a result, this proves a less satisfying Eastwood vehicle than his No Name gems but its still a precursor to the great US Westerns he would make later.

BD

(China Daily 11/09/2007 page20)