This Movie Suuucks: Torque
As I sit here in front of this fire, with my feet on this bear skin rug, I think to myself: What’s the movie equivalent to getting punched in the ear? Torque comes to mind. It completes the not-so-easy task of making you want to scream and puke at the same time in hopes that something more interesting will fly out. And I’m sure it will.
Think about that. Soak that image in. You’ll want time back that you can’t have and that’ll just make you even more mad. Puke it out Buddy, puke it out.
Torque is the story(?) of a guy who races motorcycles, not cars, because that would be too much like The Fast and the Furious and this movie is totally not that, we swear. It’s not Biker Boys either because these are biker MEN in this movie, not Orlando Jones or Kid Rock. Kid Rock’s music plays though.
“YEAH! ROCK N ROLL! Or RAP! Or COUNTRY! …What phase am I in again?”
So this guy in the movie, whose name is Ford because that’s not derivative or anything, is really cool. He’s just come back into town after something really dangerous and cool happened that made him leave. Who cares though, because he’s busy being cool now. Jeez, try and keep up.
Everybody’s out to get him: the Feds (not FedEx, the FBI) want him, thinking he’s an international drug runner (That happened to me once but people didn’t think I was cool because of it), the black bikers want him for killing their leader’s brother, and the white biker gang framed him for it because Ford hid their bikes stuffed with drugs.
Somebody should have told them that when you hide your drugs in something that’s liable to be driven off and disappear forever, you probably shouldn’t be in the business of selling drugs. Maybe a basement next time? Basements can’t be driven. And since Ford is smart (as well as cool), he knows that the only way to prove his innocence is to keep evading the police doing more illeagal things and calling the FedEx agents making demands because HE RUNS THE SHOW.
Ford clearly hasn’t had enough interaction with law enforcement.
So basically everybody wants to hurt the main character while him and his cool-looking friends drive around being cool pretending there’s an actual plot. Which there isn’t. Did I mention that these guys are cool?
Torque is a highly stylized mess that was directed by a guy who had only directed music videos until that point. That’s becomes evident after about the three minute mark when you realize the director or writer had no where else to go, because three minutes was as far as they had to go previously. It’s also about an hour and twenty minutes which is normally a bad thing but an exception is made for Torque because you want it to be over about as soon as it starts.
It takes much longer to make fun of this movie than it does to watch it. Ice Cube is the leader of the black gang and I guess he’s supposed to be cool. But when you keep the same face on for the entire movie, it not only calls into question your ability to act, but in Cube’s case, it’s also questions exactly when he’s finally going to let that turd out.
“Yo they paid me in leather, ya feel me?”
This is one of those movies that always has something happening, but it if you walked out to do something productive with your time and came back, you would have just as much of a clue as to what was going on. Yet you still won’t care.
Dane Cook also has a cameo although at the time, he wasn’t big enough for it to be called that and it was just him getting whatever work he could. He even appears on the commentary asking out loud what I was thinking when I watched this: “What is Dane Cook doing in this?” His role is one part of several instances where they attempt to take a jab at The Fast and the Furious by making it seem as though driving cars is lame. Yeah, for real, who drives cars? Totally gay.
Okay maybe SOME cars are gayer than others.
“What is it about driving cars that makes you people such a**holes?” Ford says, after he tries to run two drivers off the road. Honestly, messing around with cars while on a motorcycle doesn’t seem smart at all. Because it’s not. But this movie isn’t about what’s smart, it’s about what’s cool. And running people off the road for no reason is cool, whether you get it or not, lame car driver.
Here’s a video of what would actually happen if a biker ever decide to take on a two ton car.
That one seemed the least gruesome so I went with it. Some were much worse.
At one point, Ford finally gets to the bikes he stashed with Cubelicious following him. Ford takes the gas cap off and pulls out a tube filled with yellow powder. He tosses it to Ice Cube (I don’t know him well enough to call him just “Ice” or “Cube”) and yells “CRYSTAL METH!” which makes Cubert smile. I guess because he’s going to smoke it. Just for the heck of it, I looked up how profitable Meth is and as it turns out, it is more profitable than I originally thought, which makes me think of the alternative ways for a movie this stupid to get enough money to be made.
This was Gordy’s budget.
I don’t know too much about Meth but I’m not sure about it being yellow. Maybe they were trying to deviate from the normally used, vague, white, powdery substance that gets in every other movie drug deal. You know- the crap that’s neatly packed into a suitcase that will be shut at the first sign of trouble. “You got the stuff?” is usually how these deals begin.
I’ve never ingested it in any form but while watching this movie, ruining my life with crystal meth feels like it would be the better choice.
Also, the film’s back story involves having Ford hide these crystal meth filled bikes into a warehouse far away from where most of the story takes place. How did he get all those bikes delivered to some warehouse nobody is using or cares to mess with? This goes unanswered. It also goes unanswered how anybody got the bikes anywhere since the gas tanks are all filled with meth.
Is that what makes them go so fast? The hobo’s answer is “Yes.”
The film ends with more bikes chases that involve people shooting at each other while ramming bikes together for what culminates into a craptacular finish of an explosion for some reason. I can’t pay attention long enough to understand what’s going on or how the explosion occured. If all this wasn’t enough to get you to hate this movie, the fact that it ends with a Nickleback song should do it for you.
The peanut on top of this massive steaming pile of cow dung. If Torque thought them good enough to end with, then so do I.
Time for your checkup!
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