Biker film 'Torque' is no 'Easy Rider'

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

TORQUE (PG-13) Two Stars (Fair) A junky but mildly entertaining biker action flick. It generates little sense but a lot of dust and gas fumes. Martin Henderson and Ice Cube co-star for director Joseph Kahn. Warner Bros., 85 minutes.

The new "Torque" is a high-tech flashback to the faded glory of the American International biker flicks of the early '60s, before Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda made the form respectable. In other words, "Torque" is noisy nonsense, a silly, souped up melodrama without a muffler.

"Torque" does not rise above the form, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun, in a rumm-rumm-rumm sort of way. The film is an attempt by the producers of "The Fast and the Furious" and "XXX" to shift from high-speed four-wheel action to the two-wheel variety, and it's done with about the same minimum of intelligence and character development.

Martin Henderson plays the rough-hewn hero, a loner biker who rumbles back into to Southern California to take care of some unfinished business — and to try to rekindle a romance with his former girlfriend (Monet Mazur). The format is Western-like — except her name is Shane and his name is Cary.

Cary skipped town months earlier, after supposedly stealing two motorcycles belonging to a rival gang leader named Henry (Matt Schulze). The bikes don't run, but that's why they're valuable — the gas tanks are filled with drugs. Gee, these guys must have seen the beginning of "Easy Rider."

Also entangled in the intrigue is Trey (Ice Cube), the leader of another biker gang. Trey thinks Cary killed his brother, so he wants him dead. The FBI is also on the case and has also targeted Cary. Thus our hero is getting pressure from three fronts. He better put his pedal to the metal as soon as possible.

Of course, that's what he does, as all sorts of bikers zip and zoom across the deserts of Southern California, chasing each other up and down mesas, on top of moving railroad trains and through the streets of small towns and Los Angeles alike.

First-time director Joseph Kahn gives the film a hopped-up visual style, with grainy textures and over-saturated colors. But he goes too far in the rip-roaring finale. Cary and Henry have a confrontation while roaring through Los Angeles at a blinding 200 mph. The sequence is all a rumbling, bumbling blur — a senseless victory of action over clarity.

Rated PG-13, with violence and profanity.