Torque Review

One infantile egomaniac spells trouble. Combine about fifty of them and you get - a B-I-K-E-R movie! Yes, with the caps key on and all! There's HummVs and Harleys, fast cars and faster bikes, big explosions and bigger egos: in short, absolute m-a-y-h-e-m. And it's called a "Matrix" hangover. Clearly, Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures are still reeling under the Matrix-morning-after, but we will get into that later.

Ford (Martin Henderson) is a smooth-talking, bike-riding (but of course), blue-eyed, cute-dimpled pretty boy who can kick some serious butt. Yeah! You can watch it yet! And after you reduce your IQ by a factor of 10, you might even enjoy it. With Ford are two of his cronies, and a gal, Shane (Monet Mazur), who has a bit of a history with him.

Also giving Ford a history lesson, albeit of a different kind, is Henry James (Matt Schulze), whom the former had swindled out of drugs and a bike that is too good to be true. And that, we suspect, is why it feels so unreal. Anyway, this takes James on a vendetta trail, meaning conspiracies and bike chases.

It is some of the bike chases that compel you to ask if they were incorporated here because there wasn't any room in the Matrix movies. Really, they've biked over trains - and heck, even inside them! There is a freeway sequence (in keeping with the unwritten rule applicable to all movies of the action genre), which ends with a Hummer landing right smack atop a sports car! And don't even get us started on the 'Street Hawk' stunts they tried to pull during the climax.

As for the conspiracies, well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see right through them, although something about FBI agent McPherson (Adam Scott) towards the end maybe called something of a twist. The entire conspiracy torques around James getting Junior (Fredo Starr) killed and framing Ford for the crime. Now Junior is junior because he has a big dude brother Trey (Ice Cube), who leads the Reaper gang. So basically, trouble for Ford.

But Ford has a nose for trouble. He smells it, and then rides straight into it. Yes, he isn't very bright, because if he were he wouldn't have needed Shane to fetch him after every encounter with the baddies. Really, it makes you wonder how he got past puberty without her.

Don't let the name of the movie fool you into thinking it is a lesson in Physics. If anything, this flick shakes your belief in science. The stunts are gravity-defying, the sustained supersonic motion throws the theory of relativity out the window - and, while on the subject of science, there is no chemistry between Henderson and Mazur.

But the movie is 81 minutes of mindless entertainment. If you are in the mood for a no-brainer, this comes recommended. Very highly.