Killing Cars

Killing Cars is the first film I have watched from Fuel-Injected Films Twenty Movie Collection DVD (also released as Collision Course) put out by Mill Creek. I hope that some of the remaining nineteen are better.

Killing Cars begins well, night, neon, and fast cars. I immediately thought of Diva and Subway, two much better examples of 80's Euro-noir. My expectations did not last long. This is a talky, over-plotted film about corporate espionage. Jurgen Prochnow plays Korda, an independent car manufacturer working with a car company to create a safe car. Korda starts getting the impression that he is being forced out of the project. Meanwhile, the car company is evicting squatters from its unused grounds. Those evicted include a gang of punk rockers who want revenge. There is more, an inquisitive reporter, a plot to con Korda out of his business, and William Conrad as another uncertain plot thread to further complicate things. There is way more here than needed, but most of it comes together when the safe car is stolen.

In spite of the neon ambiance and the girl with the adorable pink Mohawk, Killing Cars is a slow drive to nowhere.

The central plot idea of a non-petrol-based car whose development is being sabotaged by vested interests from the oil industry is a good one. (The title refers to the killing OF cars, rather than to cars that kill.) However, it does not make ideal material for an action thriller, and that is exactly what director Verhoeven attempted here.

As a result there are quite a few unlikely moments in the film where my capacity to suspend disbelief was overstretched. In particular, way too much importance was given to that one example of the World Car, as if Korda had built that thing himself, entirely instinctively using a hammer and a soldering iron - and setting issues such as rights to intellectual property completely aside.

The film tries very hard to look stylish, in a very 1980s sort of way, and from a modern perspective some of this looks a bit silly: wearing sunglasses at night, Backgammon as a game that separates the men from the boys, etc.

I was tremendously disappointed by this film. The idea of a perfect car, that didn't need petrol, being kept under wraps ready to become THE world car, seen in every country but then being hijacked by people with a vested interest in seeing it disappear should have been gripping. It wasn't. The entire film was an incoherent, noisy mess and some of the dubbed voices were so flat it was impossible to believe in the characters. Juergen Prochnow, who obviously did his own dubbing, spent most of the movie in a thoroughly surly mood - much how I felt after I'd seen it - and lacked his usual charisma although he rushed around very convincingly. The movie was too long, and by the end I really didn't care what happened to the car, Prochnow or the ideals behind it all. Maybe it lost something in the translation, but for me it completely missed the mark. Don't bother unless you're desperate to see Prochnow and/or Senta Berger get their clothes off.