Our Rating: 1.00
How does a great band like Monster Magnet end up in so many shitty movies? A snippet of their “Heads Explode” video was the sole saving grace of “Dracula 2000,” and now they’re relegated to a thankless cameo in “Torque,” performing a woefully brief (and not nearly loud enough) miniconcert before an undeserving audience of bikers. Rock & roll style nonetheless informs this high-octane, low-IQ outing, with most of the characters instantly identifiable by the logo tees they wear. Hero Cary Ford (Martin Henderson) sports a Ramones shirt, typing him as scruffy but good-hearted, while girlfriend Shane (Monet Mazur) favors the Stones, a contrast that sets her up as more cautious and traditional. The villain’s main henchman, meanwhile, displays his allegiance to Motorhead, which lets us know that he’s all about laying the smack down. There’s also an FBI agent (Adam Scott) who, we kid you not, could easily pass for a member of the Strokes. Playing deconstruct-the-riffhead-fashion is the most involving element of “Torque,” a ludicrous endless-highway opera full of burning chrome, booty-shaking and beyond-overt product placement. Returning from self-imposed exile in Thailand, kindly rascal Ford faces a showdown with a rival cyclist (Matt Schulze) who once stuck him with a bunch of hogs that were loaded with crystal meth. But before their score can be settled, Ford has to clear up a tragic misunderstanding with yet another rival cyclist (Ice Cube, snarling foolishly). The movie’s gravity-free audacity is typified by a segment that sees the latter two men pursuing each other (while still on their bikes, mind you) on top of a moving train Ð and ultimately inside it, passengers diving out of their way as they varoom up the aisles. Oh, and the dope-dealing baddie in question is named Henry James, which lends a nice American-lit angle to all the exhaust-happy idiocy. In the spirit of the new year, we feel that we should find something good to say about every movie we review. So let the record show that “Torque” is … well … a lot shorter than it could have been.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2004.