Tracers

Had never heard of this movie until the other night when I was looking for something new to watch. I was entertained enough to stay up late to finish it and have watched the parkour parts of the movie a few times more. I love the music.

I'd really recommend watching this movie all the way through. It doesn't carry you all the way, so you need to have some preliminary interest(s) in the genres of this film, mainly parkour. If you are looking for a good parkour film, you're in luck and you should be pleased overall. Its also not bad for action, crime, or thriller genre-fans either.

The cast does a good job in their roles, though the script is fairly basic. The story-arc is intriguing throughout the majority, and while there are a few holes, I was left feeling content with the final execution. There is a very good amount of parkour-"action", so if you have any interest in this area, you should be well pleased.

I had no interest in the teen-drama aspect of the film, but the other aspects of the film allowed me to endure this weak point. They were probably trying to appeal to the female, Taylor Lautner fan-crowd on the romantic aspects of the story line. This is the first film I've seen him star or co-star in, and I will say that he did a decent job. It looked like he did a fair amount of the parkour moves himself, so he has my respect for his dedication to training for this film.

If you are a fan of District B13 movies, the video game Mirror's Edge, or just a parkour enthusiast in general, I really think you'll enjoy this flic overall.

The two young stars, Canadian beauty Marie Avgeropoulos and Taylor Lautner, are both considerably better than the material.

Which is a back-handed compliment since the material is pretty terrible.

What you have here is a targeted-to-young-audience "street drama" with pretensions of being an action thriller because of the backdrop of Free-Jumping. In fact the closest antecedents would be the "crime dramas" of the 1940s. Sort of.

That is a lot of ambition here and very little in the way of delivery.

There are problems galore. The script is all over the place. Sometimes it thinks it is a rom-com. Sometimes it thinks it is a Van Damme knockoff. And sometimes it thinks it is West Side Story.

The free-jumping scenes are over-directed. What that means is that while the film tries to maintain a "street cred" sort of realism, the action scenes are so well choreographed you might think you were watching a music video. This creates dissonance, which does not help the viewer experience.

And the action climax, the last 10 minutes which is where most films get to shine, is actually weaker than the first 10 minutes, where the romance starts. Which is hardly a great recommendation.

Bottom line: the two stars deserve better. Much better.

He's handsome, she's gorgeous. He owes money lenders a lot of money, she's has some dough. It's your usual boy- meets-girl flick, but this time, there's a lot of running around and jumping, all in the name of parkour.

The only thing that kept me awake was the action, which, after awhile, got a bit blasé.

Lautner's character may have got into trouble because his desire to pay off his debts, but it certainly doesn't absolve him from using ill- gotten wealth to clear them.

2 out of 5 stars

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Quickie Review:

Burdened by the debt he owes the Chinese mafia, Cam (Taylor Lautner) must find a quick way to earn money. In his desperation he joins a group of street runners who use their skills to commit high-paying crimes. Cam soon finds himself in criminal world with higher stakes than he expected. Other than the parkour scenes there is no other redeemable quality to Tracers. In fact there is a severe lack of quality in acting and story logic. This should have been a simple crime-heist movie with some parkour action in it. Instead there are numerous instances of forced drama that you will not care about at all. This movie is simply a waste of time.

Full Review:

Let's be blunt here, other than the Twilight fans nobody is looking forward to a Taylor Lautner movie. Then again I used feel the same way about Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattinson, but lately they have been making good decisions in choosing their roles. So I thought I'd give Lautner the benefit of the doubt. I was wrong.

I'll give Tracers this, the parkour scenes were well done. There were plenty of these chase scenes and they did bring some excitement in an otherwise dull movie. It's not to the skill level of parkour master David Belle in the French film District B13, but the chase scenes were certainly the best parts of movie. That's where the kudos end for me.

I think everyone would agree that movies should try to make us empathize with the main characters. However, the writers try to achieve this by going overboard and giving everyone a troubled past. I mean we have characters who are in deep debt with the Chinese mafia, have been abandoned by their father, had a mother who died after being evicted, living on scraps on the streets, attempted sexual assault victim. With all these problems and horrible past I'm shocked they are even functioning human beings! Every other scene is some character deeply brooding about how their hoping for a better life. Then there is a love story that doesn't make sense beyond "hey you're kinda hot, I'm kinda hot. Let's get it on." Oh and of course that comes with an obligatory love triangle that you see coming from miles away. There is no chemistry because the dialog and the performances are cringe worthy. Honestly, why these people are even interacting together makes no sense. As if the movie wasn't bloated enough with unnecessary backstories, there are random twists and turns in the story that are very illogical because there was no previous setup.

I am sure some will say I'm overthinking this. No, I'd argue it's the writers who overthought this movie. There was a good hook here: using parkour skills to pull off heists. All that was needed was a simple story to give reason for these chase scenes, but they try to add drama with poorly written characters and the laughable performances didn't help either. Definitely not worth parkour running out to see it.

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