DVD REVIEW: TORQUE

BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
MSRP: $27.98 RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 84 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Audio Commentaries
• Documentaries
• Music Video
• Animatics
• Deleted Scenes

Perhaps
the most legendary arbiter of torment and torture
during the Spanish Inquisition was known as
Torquemada (Torque to his pals). Torment. Torture.
Torque. Could it all come together
in one violent and intrusive bundle of digital
dickslam? Read on…

Twisting
force, my ass.

The
Flick

Though
not as intimidating as Bone-Eater McDaniel or
Terror Shrimp, The Red Shitter was no pushover
in the super villain sweepstakes.

I
made the mistake of blinking during Torque‘s
theatrical run and therefore had to cool my
jets until the film was massaged into a round
I Come in Peace weapon to discover
if it was fast and furious or just plain racist
towards me. From the advertisements, it looked
like the latest adrenaline fueled music video
set on wheels with a cast of unmemorable talent
set to lame music and edited to the point of
sending epileptics off to a twitching early
grave.

Thankfully,
it’s all of those things.

After
the ADR budget ran out, the filmmakers were
forced to seek other means of getting the dialogue
taken care of.

When
I say that Torque is the most
shamelessly synthetic and overstylized action
flick ever made I mean it in the nicest way
possible. This film makes cheese blush. It gives
bullet time lead poisoning. From the first computer
assisted race sequence to the climactic Chop-Kawasaki
and Mach 48373 race through the city, Torque
revels in excess in ways that would resurrect
Don Simpson and eject him from his grave in
slow motion as doves gather and carry him to
the surface of Venus where he is pelted with
little rocks shaped like Jerry Bruckheimer’s
night terrors. As the film unfolded I seriously
found myself falling in love with its utter
fakeness and bold arrogance. You know the kind
of love I’m referring to. The love an inmate
finds after cell blocks B and C ventilate his
colon enough so that he forgets what it was
like before the whistling sound began to waft
from his drawers twenty-four hours a day. Before
his ass had its own climate. Torque
is that rough lover, the one who punches you
in the eyes when he/she is happy and does spinning
monkey kicks to your coccyx when he/she feels
melancholy. This film has the Goodyear blimp
testicles to recreate a quote from The
Fast and the Furious (also produced
by Neal Moritz, one of this film’s many Summerian
summoners) and then scoff at it.

It
scoffs at The Fast and the Furious,
a film that not only made this film possible
but one that looks like a Cassavettes flick
in comparison. Let that sink in. I’ll wait.

This
film slapped me so many times, I became Faye
Dunaway.

"I
hate it. I love it. I hate it. I love it. Why
did John Huston throw me the business? I love
it. I hate it." These were the words drifting
from my locked room as I experienced the twisting
force.

"Doctor,
I might be coming down with something. I have
this metallic taste in my mouth. And my nose."

The
film has an intricate and multi-layered plot
involving motorcycles. In fact, there’s also
some people who ride on them, something I believe
which suggests an almost biblical beast of burden
dual meaning but I’d have to consult the Kama
Sutra and John Grisham’s The Client
to be sure. The characters have easy to remember
names like Ford, Dalton, Shane, Nina, and Val
and it’s good because the subtext being hurled
at my jaws at 3000 rpm kept me from keeping
track. The filmmakers (led by director/holocaust
Joseph Kahn) threw my psyche into an uproar
when they had the gall to toss in a character
named Henry James. Two names. One person. Thank
God for Advil.

I
think I figured it out after a few viewings
though, like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The monolith of Torque is Martin
Henderson and by that I mean he ought to be
trapped in the vacuum of space.

"Looks
like Martin’s back on the menu, boys!"

Henderson
comes from the same vault in central casting
that brought us Scott Speedman. They’re good
looking fellows who are like a living placebo
tossed in between actors. They can recite lines,
look good on camera, but there’s obviously some
foul play at hand. Perhaps he hasn’t gotten
the role that proves his worth, but I spent
much of Torque‘s idling time (see
that’s a little motorcycle terminology) not
only not caring if his character lived, died,
or was sold as the cure for arthritis but wondering
if I was actually alive myself. Honestly, I
won’t be surprised at all if I finish this review
and upload it onto the server and then realize
I’m actually an energy maggot on Neptune’s hidden
moon having a lucid dream. Martin Henderson
2: On the Move.

All
of the film’s stars left me looking into the
abyss and hoping it was looking back at me.
In fact, I now secretly harbor a desire for
the abyss to not only look back at me, but invite
me in. Monet Mazur is a very pretty woman who
looks very good on camera and using a motorcycle
to conduct ninja assaults, but I couldn’t find
myself believing that she could love Martin
Henderson’s character more than a freshly popped
Mountain Dew. Ice Cube has more scowls than
Eskimos have terms for snow, but it seems the
promise of Three Kings has been
replaced with a sign that says "Out For
Lunch. Will Be Back in Five Films". Christina
Milan? Of her six minutes of screen time I deduced
that she has a bright future ahead of her, provided
nuclear warheads explode constantly within her
line of sight. Adam Scott plays one of two FBI
agents that ride around in a Hummer looking
for bikers to bust and though I doubt Sam &
Twitch t-shirts aren’t standard issue, the biggest
arc his character had was when he remembered
to pay for gas. Jaime Pressly had a surprisingly
tiny amount of screen time considering she’s
actually one of the more veteran members of
the cast, and though she was sexy as she’s ever
been all gussied up as a queen bitch I found
it hard to believe she could hold her own in
Torque‘s Ninja Bike Combat™
segment. I’ve seen people race around and kick
each other with motorcycles and they look nothing
like the star of Ticker.

…and
it was then that Daniel realized why he was
voted ‘Most Likely to Explode Amongst Parts"
in his high school yearbook.

The
brilliance of Torque…

Sorry,
had to take a break there. Scientists just knocked
on my door and handed me an award for being
the 16,000th person to start a sentence with
"The brilliance of Torque"…
is that it doesn’t nudge against the concept
of taking the genre and bending it a little,
it fires a pulse weapon at the concept to loosen
it up and then drives a stretch M-1 Abrams tanks
through it while guzzling champagne and eating
truffles mined from the back of Rudy Ray Moore.
It’s so over the top that it’s hard not to just
give in after about a half hour of utterly ludicrous
behavior and have fun with it. The acting doesn’t
matter, the fact that Kahn has the attention
span of a nematode in a triple espresso petri
dish doesn’t matter.

Nothing
matters except the wretched excess of the twisting
force.

"Maximillian…
I thought you died on the Cygnus with
Dr. Reinhardt."

I
find Torque to represent all that
is unholy in the film business. If it were enrolled
in the school of style over substance, it’d
be the one with the automatic weapon. Zooms
give birth to computer generated internal cross
sections which give birth to whip pans to speeding
racers which smash cut to computer assisted
shots of people whisking past each other which
give birth to impossible shots 200 feet in the
sky which gives birth to the It’s Alive
baby, teeth bared for hatred. Everything is
wrong, from the silly train chase sequence to
the 200mph duels that defy the laws of physics,
gravity, and Jude. This is the only film with
extreme sports that no kid would ever try at
home and thusly not require a disclaimer. Evel
Kneivel would see this and piss his starry jumpsuit.

It’s
this fearless determination to rule the looney
bin that makes Torque a special
film. They knew what they were doing. It was
evil, but I can’t fault them for going forward
with their fiendish scheme. It’s the best worst
movie you might see this year. It’s like a milkshake
filled with Drano. It’ll taste great going in
but it’ll victimize your throat, lungs, stomach,
and rectum like nobody’s business.

Except
Martin Henderson and his twisting force.

Though he grew his hair out in the winter Brian
could never fully conceal his Sleestak noggin.

I
love this movie. I hate this movie.

0.0
out of 10/10 out of 10

Kane
McBlur unknowingly becomes member #49,489 of
THE NATION’S PUNCHED™.

The
Look

Torque
has an agenda that involves the savage and uninterrupted
mutilation of your soul, and I’m proud to say
that this widescreen transfer does so in a way
that allows the process to happen without a
hitch. The last thoughts that will enter your
mind before you are a faceless automaton with
a yellow leather jumpsuit is "This film
looks good…".

You
will then lose bodily control and soil yourself
and everyone you’ve ever loved but it won’t
be because Warner Bros. delivered a shoddy transfer.
This looks nice, you frigging robot.

9.0
out of 10

The
Noise

In
addition to incinerating your eyes with the
greatest of ease, the DVD of Torque
has no worries in recreating Stallone’s Copland
aural canals in your own living room on your
own living head. The 5.1 Dolby track has the
subtlety of the 2nd fully functional Death Star
and whether it’s the cathartic Satanic purr
of the film’s numerous crotch rockets or the
shafty song du jour in the film’s jukebox of
sorrows, everything comes through with flying
colors. Not unlike a Technicolor yawn.

Good
work, though. It booms and it blams and it makes
the couch quiver. Just like mom.

9.0
out of 10

"Yeah, I’m here to audition for The
Adventures of Young Kurt Russell."

The
Goodies

I’d have paid
an easy two-hundred bucks for this DVD if it
featured three commentary tracks featuring Joseph
Kahn apologizing in every known language including
Sign. Sadly,
there are only two tracks of him apologizing,
but he does it in a really subtle way. He does
it by talking about the movie.

I
swear, if I listened to these commentary tracks
and discovered that Kahn took this film seriously
I would have demanded his and my knees be transplanted.
Thankfully, he knows exactly what he’s done
and probably going to Hell for and I found it
to be quite fun. There’s a cast commentary where
Kahn sits in with his bikers and I liked it,
though the overall impact is lessened by so
many people that it becomes impossible to tell
who’s who and who’s currently hosting Azazel.
Still, it’s a really fun track and it put my
mind at ease that Torque was actually
a fun film and not a weapon of mass destruction.

The
second track features Kahn apologizing through
the explanation of how the film was made. It’s
a lot more technical but an apology nonetheless.

Additionally,
there are some animatics which illustrate/apologize
how a few of the scenes were done/inflicted
from the animatic stage all the way through
finished and rendered final products. It’s pretty
neat, though some of the finished effects are
about as convincing as a luggage rack cooking
me dinner.

Most
importantly, there’s a video by Youngbloodz.
I think you’ll all agree that it’s that feature
that escalates this DVD from "Must Purchase"
to "Must Worship".

7.5
out of 10

The
Torque Guide to Subtle Filmmaking: Reflections

Shooting
in a mirror is cool and represents the duality
of man.

No,
really.

Objects
from Crazy/Beautiful are larger
than they appear.

Another
neat trick: Making it appear an actor is kissing
his girl as she frolics in General Zod’s prison.

This
represents the duality of man and also suggests
that man too might have a toothpick, screwdriver,
and compass hidden in his ass.

The
Artwork

The
artwork is very similar to the original one-sheet,
except this version doesn’t have a cryptic mind
control element begging you to punish your loved
ones hidden within.

It’s
eye-catching, shows off its attractive cast,
and features a nice motion blurred glimpse at
two people conducting the centuries old martial
art involving only inner peace and a Japanese
motorbike.

7.0
out of 10

Overall: .005 or 10 out of 10