|
★★½☆☆
2 May 2018
A movie review of RACER AND THE JAILBIRD. |
“I promise you one thing. After this, I’m done,” Gigi (Matthias Schoenaerts)
Great title, but what a mess! Part heist movie, part romance, part… illness melodrama. Huh?! I am all for subverting audience expectation, but the meshing of tones and genres should be seamless. A love story between a bank robber and a female race car driver had the makings of a doozy of a romantic action thriller. Instead, we get pacing problems, random plotting, and the one-last-job crime cliché. Please can that plot point be retired! Enough already. It signposts tragedy. The audience should never be ahead of the movie, unless it is about building tension through the viewer cycling through outcomes as they would in their everyday lives. (If a film can make the decision exciting as to which pesto sauce to buy, that would be a thriller for the ages.)
Great title, but what a mess! Part heist movie, part romance, part… illness melodrama. Huh?! I am all for subverting audience expectation, but the meshing of tones and genres should be seamless. A love story between a bank robber and a female race car driver had the makings of a doozy of a romantic action thriller. Instead, we get pacing problems, random plotting, and the one-last-job crime cliché. Please can that plot point be retired! Enough already. It signposts tragedy. The audience should never be ahead of the movie, unless it is about building tension through the viewer cycling through outcomes as they would in their everyday lives. (If a film can make the decision exciting as to which pesto sauce to buy, that would be a thriller for the ages.)
|
|
At least the leads have chemistry. Gigi and Bibi. Cute. We are in an amour-noir; crime, like a black hole, sucks in everything, including the innocent. Gigi (Matthias Schoenaerts) and Bibi (Adèle Exarchopoulos) of course are instantly attracted to each other. These are two sexy leads. They are star-crossed lovers from different classes. Gigi claims he is a businessman, but he is not a great liar. Her father sees through him, but Bibi at first doesn’t care. Gigi avoids inviting her to his apartment – that’s got to set off alarm bells, right?
The two are adrenaline junkies. She on the track, he taking from banks. A real shame there is no substance to the movie. It would not have been a stretch to include some social commentary. For example, might not the narrative have tied into the financial crash of 2008?
|
|
RACER AND THE JAILBIRD is violent. Think Ben Affleck’s THE TOWN. Scenes have crunch. You wonder how brutal they can get. The film though is not in the same league as say HEAT or CARLITO’S WAY. Gigi’s crew are virtually character nonentities. Even a dinner party scene does not enliven them. It is hard to fathom the choice between Bibi and them. They have Gigi’s loyalty, but how about earning the audience’s? The strain between friends and a lover can have its own tension, e.g. WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP. The story did not need to go down that road, but we needed something more.
Having a talented female race car driver is so welcome, which pointed to an exhilarating climax, but the ending is a let-down.
|
|
Using these Google Adsense links help us keep Filmaluation free for all film and arts lovers.