Tracers

Caught up in a dicey loan deal, Cam (Taylor Lautner), a New York bike messenger stumbles into the exhilarating world of parkour when he crashes into Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos), a beautiful stranger. Quite reluctantly, Nikki introduces Cam to her crew of freerunners who appear to have some shady undercurrents. Desperate to be free of his debt, Cam gets caught up in a criminal world that begins to crumble around him as he struggles to protect that which is most important to him.

The slick parkour adds dynamic flair and physicality to the fight and chase scenes, while the seamlessly captured rhythm of the choreography makes the thrilling action easy to follow. The rapid pace forces you to keep moving forward, not allowing time to look back, much the same as the parkour requires you to constantly consider the next obstacle. The tactile sport serves the gritty aesthetic well and Lautner's ease of ability in the parkour scenes is mesmerising.

Apart from the action, Tracers offers an authentic look at the difficulties faced by people desperate to find their place in the world. The sincerity of the plot enables you to connect with Cam's plight, but the film avoids drowning in it's own drama by not taking itself too seriously. The initial scenes are fun and full of youthful exuberance as Cam hones his new skills, but as the stakes become higher, he must use these skills to stay alive.

Tracers is an action packed adrenaline rush with some gripping twists. Fans of freerunning will appreciate the integration of the sport while action lovers will enjoy a fresh perspective on the genre. There is nothing exceedingly complex to be found here, although the thrilling finale will leave you needing a moment or two to catch your breath.

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.

"Tracers" offers decent parkour action scenes and a better than average BMX action scene. The parkour isn't nearly as well choreographed as the opening scene in "Casino Royale" or most of the scenes in "Banlieue B13," and is often not credible because the characters make seemingly blind leaps on unfamiliar cityscapes, but the scenes are shown in a realistic manner and Taylor Lautner the other actors seem to do much of their own stunt work.

The script brings entirely new dimensions to the concept of "lame." It might pull passing marks as a high school creative writing assignment if it were submitted on a day when the instructor was in a good mood, but fails miserably as a movie script. The film often feels like some insipid urban hip hop dance movie with predominantly lily white protagonists and parkour substituted for dance.

The inciting incident involves the protagonist being distracted by the love interest to the point that he damages his property. In a fit of frustration, he discards it, even though it could easily be repaired and he needs it for work and he's desperate for money, then goes home to his well-equipped garage and does an analogous repair for his landlady's kid. Meanwhile, the girl feels bad because this person she doesn't know damaged property that could be replaced for a hundred dollars or repaired for fifty, so she buys him something to replace it that costs about a thousand dollars and somehow tracks him down and has it delivered to his place of employment.

This is just one example of the muddled motivations of the characters.

There's a Chinese bookie that wants his money right away. Why? It's not as if he needs the money. He should want his money on the street earning vigorish. If the borrower is still paying but running a little late, all the better as it provides an excuse to tack on extra charges.

Why do the hero and heroine fall in love? Because they're both so irresistibly attractive, but have absolutely no other active love interests and both have athletic bodies that they keep hidden beneath baggy sweats. Because they have troubled pasts and limited future prospects. Because a movie like this needs a central love story. The romantic angle seems superficial, to put it mildly.

If you're a criminal, why reveal part of your devious plan in a room that the police undoubtedly have wired for sound?

If you're planning something that requires a team of five people to use parkour to get out of a dangerous situation, wouldn't it make more sense to rehearse in that same area so everybody learns the terrain rather than keeping the location a secret?

If you need to stop the action for a scene with exposition explaining the meaning of the title to the audience, would it make sense to consider a different title?

What does jumping through windows have to do with parkour?

Characters are given flimsy generic backgrounds in a half-hearted effort to make them three-dimensional, but character development is pretty much nonexistent. The parkour moves are not nearly as extreme as in other films, but they're made to seem too easy. We don't see the grueling training that is necessary to master the techniques or any consideration of different approaches to clearing an obstacle. The dangers and need for practice are given lip service in dialogue, but not shown, other than a shot of a scar that has long since healed. Some of the free runners seem to be there to fill the screen, as there is little interaction between the characters. Dialogue is heavy on exposition with little subtext and even less humor. If there is a moral or theme, it would take a far more astute observer than this humble critic to understand it. Parkour is described as overcoming obstacles in your mind, but never becomes an allegory for overcoming the obstacles in life.

The film lacks passion. Not that it should be melodramatic or devolve into pathos, but everyone behaves as if they are on Quaaludes when they aren't scaling walls. The most dramatically intense scene occurs when something happens to a car that hasn't run in a very long time.

The parkour and BMX action scenes are fun to watch but not great. The story is a hackneyed and derivative disappointment. The actors do well with the action scenes and as well as can be expected with the dialogue they're given. The one love scene is shot so modestly it won't need to be edited out for network television and might not even cause much furor if shown in Muslim countries. Production values are adequate, although the use of jiggly-cam in static shots is distracting.

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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