You know, I expected a certain amount of imitators to crawl out of the woodwork with the recent resurgence of Fast and Furious. I expected them to be on the low end of the old quality scale. But I never expected the British version of Fast and Furious…Octane.
Octane gets us nice and acquainted with Brent Black, who is the current king of the Brighton street racing scene by virtue of having a really incredibly tricked out vintage Ford. Apparently, no one in England can match the sheer power of Ford, which the crew at Top Gear would LOVE to dispute.
Anyway, Black runs the circuit, and as such, gets an offer to tangle with some SERIOUS racers from, well, I’m not sure where exactly they’re from, but they’ve got some cars that can actually give Black and his Ford a race. These guys are also the kind who really, REALLY don’t like the thought of losing. So it’s not really surprising when Black’s shop burns down and takes the Ford with it. So will Brent be able to pick up and win his most dangerous race? Or will he lose it all?
You might expect a movie like Octane to have lots of hot cars, hot chicks, and hot action. What you get is cars that crawl along, doing occasional “burnouts” as though someone’s in the background screaming about how the price of replacement tires just isn’t in the budget. You get a pregnant girl who happens to be Brent’s girlfriend who seemingly will not stop smoking and drinking despite the fact that she’s very pronouncedly pregnant (later to be replaced by a more attractive crackhead, which in itself is saying a lot). And you get some really, REALLY halfassed action sequences that are a lot more like comedy than they are like action, just incredibly unintentional.
Oh, and poetry. Let’s not forget the poetry.
I’ve seen some real wreckages in my day, but man, this may be one of the saddest, sorriest attempts to cash in on a much more popular title that I’ve seen in recent memory. Octane might well be a whole new standard of craptacular that the British moviemaking industry should be downright ashamed of.
Packed with cliches and other assorted failures, Octane is nothing so much as a pathetic waste of a movie. It’s clearly struggling to do, well, something…but I really can’t tell what. Is this some kind of commentary on youth? The underground race scene? I have nary a clue what they’re out for and frankly, I could not possibly care less than I do right now.
Octane, to be perfectly honest with you, is utter garbage. If you’re looking for a really unpleasant way to spend an hour and a half that at least peripherally involves auto racing because you can’t stand to wait for Fast and Furious to hit, well, this is the movie for you. Also, if you want a movie that’s a really easy MiSTie bait, this one’s king. I had a great time mocking it because it takes itself so seriously.
It only seemed appropriate that I should get something like enjoyment out of this gigantic misery tour of a movie, and that was the best there was. The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this flaming car wreck a three out of ten, because there’s fun to be had here for the creative.
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You know, I’m not a HUGE car buff–I consider a car to be little more than a way to point A to point B. Though I do prefer to get their comfortably, quickly, and without spending an arm and a leg in gas costs–just an arm is good enough by me–I’m not terribly enthused by the thought of cars that look like small spacecraft that go from zero to sixty before you even blink. I only really know what torque is thanks to high school physics, and horsepower to me means about as much in my car as it does in my lawn mower.