After the recent release of "The Fast and the Furious" my faith has been slipping in car movies. "Gone in 60 seconds" had good cars but not enough action. Like most people, I also have little faith in the upcoming movie "2 Fast 2 FURIOUS". The Last Race combines the racing of The Fast and the Furious with the realism of homemade movie street racing.
The main problem with the movie is its low budget - invariably this also leads to a lack of acting skills. The acting by Stephen Sullivan (the main character) is satisfactory but seems forced. The scene between him and his girlfriend is boring and poorly played out. Luis Villalta (Arman) does a better job of portraying the nemesis in the movie but could still use some work. Unfortunately, the character of Jason is very poorly acted. With ridiculous lines like "Hey Barbie, I got a little sumthin'-sumthin' for you" and "you crash my ride bitch! you crash my ride!" it is clear he had little to work with.
Along with some mediocre acting the plot suffers as well. Does anybody actually believe that this group of 30-year-old actors is fresh out of high school and about to enter college? It also looks very ridiculous when the "police bust" consists of a single police car chasing several hundred street racers.
Did anybody else notice the similarity between "The Fast and the Furious" scenes in this movie? Both racing scenes are similar: (1) Person A challenges person B (2) Crowd of mechanics suddenly appears around two racers cheering and yelling "ohhhhhh" (3) Person B refuses to race (4) Person A makes witty comment (5) Mechanics laugh and nod their heads in agreement (6) Challenge accepted. The getaway scene is also very similar to The Fast and the Furious with people screaming, throwing their hands up into the air, and peeling out.
So what makes this movie so good? For me it is the realism of how the races were setup. The crew actually invited street racers to be the crowd and arranged several races before and during the filming. This is exactly how races happen in many areas. The last race between the asian racer and Rob is true to the randomness of real street racing. Not the best, but better than Fast and the FURIOUS. I hear there are plans for a sequel, I look forward to seeing what they can do.
