Born to Race

I saw this movie on the cable video store and it caught my eye. I'm a car guy and have seen the Fast & Furious franchise movies amongst others. The movie starts off like F&F movie, in particular Tokyo Drift, with the LA Street Race scene. The kid ruins his life and makes a turn around, I'll leave it at that and you can get more from the synopsis.

What makes this movie great is they do use a mixture of Domestic and Import cars. The opening credits have one race with a late model mustang and late model Monte Carlo, which then has your imports. There are more scenes like that including a new 5.0, the last generation camaro, and some oldies, including a street race with a Belair and a Grand National. This Definitely something that does stand out from the other movies by not having just imports or having one single American muscle car.

Also another plus is the final scenes of the movie take place at the race strip, which in my opinion and through out this movie, is trying to get the underlying message that knuckleheads need to start taking this race scene back to the track instead of the streets.

Another point which no one has pointed out is the use of the 2011 Mustang in this movie. Older car buffs might see this. 20 yrs ago the, the competition was the Late Model 5.0 and the Buick Grand National, which are seen in this movie. The director does show that this rival lives on with the new 5.0 Mustang and now with the WRX Subaru. Just a little something to note, nothing to write home about.

Overall this movie is definitely worth renting or buying whether your a fan of the illegal race scene or fan of the F&F franchise. The movie holds its own and is not a let down like the Asylum movies "Street Racer" and "200 MPH"

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.

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.

.. and that's not a bad thing. Most car movies out there are entertainment-only movies for the general audience, so they are full of hammy dialog, hammy acting, hammy directing and inaccuracies about cars.

This is fairly accurate about cars (not perfect, but not outrageous either), has some hammy dialog but the acting and directing are quite competent compared with the Fast and the Furious.

I highly recommend this film for lovers of cars and drag racing in particular. It's also good to see street racers take it to the track like they should; although there are scenes of irresponsible driving, those scenes don't go well for the main character and the movie leads the audience morally in the right direction: to the track.

Since the beginning you know how the movie will be end. Is not at all original, the movie just takes things (a lot of them) from other movies. Bad acting, poor dialogs, anodyne characters. The hero, the guy that looks like a young Quentin Tarantino is boring, and at the end, who cares if he wins or not? Like other reviewer said, the film is full of clichés: the High School bad guy, his girlfriend who fall in love with the new kid in town, the rich dad, the drunk/loser dad, etc, etc. Nothing new. If you want to waste 94 minutes of your life, go ahead and watch it. There's a movie much better than this, even better than Tokyo Drift. Is called "Initial D". I assure you, you won't be disappointed with Initial D. You won't regret using 107 minutes from your life to watch it.