Born to Race

Ever since the mainstream success of 2001's "The Fast and the Furious", street racing movies have been a recurring subject for big and small film studios alike. Despite the relative popularity of movies in this vein, they tend to draw the ire of "gearheads" (or petrolheads, for those across the pond) due to their questionable representation of cars, car culture, racing, and automotive technology. Whether it be nonsensical techno-babble, or impossible-to-reconcile vehicle physics, there tends to be a deluge of blind idiot errors or silly oversights that annoy those of us whose hearts pump synthetic oil rather than blood.

No movie is wholly immune to such things, but thankfully, "Born to Race" averts the aforementioned TFATF-esque ludicrousness. The research has clearly been done when it comes to the techno-babble strewn throughout the film. Moreover, car culture and drag racing is more or less accurately represented where other movies fall flat. The American muscle cars shown aren't the typical triumvirate of Mustang, Camaro, and Charger/Challenger (though these are certainly featured within). A Buick Grand National plays a significant role in the film, and is a recurring sight throughout, and there are scenes exhibiting an Oldsmobile 442, Chevrolet Bel Air and Nova, and even the Lil' Red Express 1979 Dodge D150 drag truck. In summation, the cars, car jargon, and car culture has a greater, more accurate representation than most Hollywood racer films.

The other large failing of many street racing-genre films is the catastrophically canned acting the leads and support dole out. While the script is nothing short of generic high school hero stuff, the acting is of an unusually high caliber. Lead Joseph Cross, of "Running With Scissors" fame, delivers a solid, if slightly weedy performance, and the big bad bully, played by Brando Eaton, does well with what he's given to work with. My personal favorite character, the father of the protagonist, played by veteran John Pyper-Ferguson, puts forth an excellent effort, managing to be lovable, despicable, and humorous all at once.

Where other street racer movies are a complete mess of poor acting and Wikipedia knowledge, Born to Race manages a solid cinema experience for a fraction of the cost of the big boys. I would recommend this film to any street racing/drag racing aficionados, as well as anyone who likes a decent high school hero drama-type story.

Some of you are just ignorant and don't know what your talking about, its sad.

This is a pretty dang good movie for having next to no budget. And there are cars in this movie that are actually awesome, built rides unlike another street racing movie series....

I need to write more, so ill just let you know that a few of you posted some very untrue statements, which was awesome. I wont call you out because it must be nice living in your ignorant bliss. Wish i could do that.

So if your reading these, just watch the movie, give it a chance, there are no big names, but there are some recognizable faces.

By just looking at the title and cover you would think this is some ultra low budget cheese fest with poor acting and ridiculous plots but that is very far from the truth.

Despite being predictable and having the usual cliches it's very entertaining, all the actors played their parts well and the movie was well shot. The racing scenes are also very well done and there is no over the top nonsense, everything is completely plausible.

If your a fan of modified cars along with street and drag racing this will surely keep you entertained without doubt, the director or whomever was responsible did their homework with the technical aspects of cars and the modifications so all seems mostly realistic.

Give it a shot you won't be disappointed.

The acting is actually better than F&F. The storyline is predictable but why does every movie need huge surprises and twists? Only one car explodes the whole movie. The cars are everyman obtainable and relatable. No supercars or money-is-no-object modification budgets. No races that last three minutes and have 12 gear shifts that are supposedly a 1/4 mile. And they listened to the technical advisers because the dialog about the car mods is actually pretty accurate.

Overall this very enjoyable and fun. Not an action movie masquerading as a car movie.

Gearheads may have been given a lot of trash-worthy action-racing titles lately, mostly all trying to rip and copy on Vin Diesel's Fast & Furious franchise. But the stupid part about it is that it seems like each one of those "street racing" movies get dumber by the sequel and stupider by the spin-off, except for this movie...Born to Race.

I loved this movie because it stays completely true to itself. One of the dumbest parts about Tokyo Drift was how many cars that kid burned through, there was no respect for the vehicles they way they respected the cars, the tuning and the performance in this movie. Now, if you're not a gear-head a lot of the lingo will go over your head, but if you're not really into cars or racing movies then I don't see why you would be reading reviews for a movie about cars and racing(?) Anyways, the writing is actually several times better than most Hollywood flicks. They don't have "easy answers" for everything and most scenes fade out instead trying to drag on and force characters to resolve things. Mostly because in real life we don't always resolve things in one sitting.

I also liked that the movie stayed true to the character direction, even with its clichés...It was easy to both hate and root for the protagonist in this film because you could understand why he did the things he did, but at the same time, he was a young idiot, so the director and writer did a job of balancing it out.

Also, I just have to say, that 2011 Black Mustang was a freaking beast and the Subaru was a true standout star. I'm glad they also kept the races realistic with real cars and not all that crappy CG stuff.

This was a good low-budget film for car enthusiasts and racing fans.