Review: Overdrive

Overdrive
Cert: 12A / 93 mins / Dir. Antonio Negret / Trailer



You just know that Statham got the call for this. But having already progressed from the Transporter movies to a mainstay in the Fast & Furious franchise, there's no way he was taking a step back down the ladder. Clint Eastwood's boy, on the other hand, also appeared in the last F&F but has a CV which looks more like the floor-level shelf at Blockbuster. I imagine everything after that just fell into place.

Overdrive is the tale of half-brothers*¹ Andrew (Scott Eastwood) and Garrett Foster (Freddie Thorp), a pair of car-thieves eking a living by liberating rare vintage models from their lawful owners. When a job in the south of France runs into difficulties, the brothers devise a plan to play one buyer of hot-wheels off against the other, for which they'll need the help of hustlers Stephanie (Ana de Armas) and Devin (Gaia Weiss). What could possibly go wrong..?

This is the movie that's so fast it missed the signs saying >> Straight to Video >>.

It's a film for people who become genuinely aroused looking at classic cars and who wouldn't know a tight script if it bit them on the arse. Anything outside of the actual car chases has plot developments and dialogue so clunky that you'd swear the film was storyboarded with Lego. To be fair, there's little to actively to hate in here, but only because it's not that interesting.

Eastwood has clearly pinned his repertoire on the strong/silent archetype, meaning he's not the one who explains the plot developments every fifteen minutes. Which means a lot - a lot - of this is left to Freddie Thorp, who drops the narrative ball every time it's passed to him in. He limps through the film like an enthusiastic, second-tier boyband member who's won a walk-on part in a competition then been handed the wrong script. At least, for once, Scott Eastwood isn't the worst thing in a movie. And you needn't worry about any of the classic-cars getting trashed; the filmmakers seem too scared of making middle-aged men in the audience cry for that to happen.



That poster is a bit disconcerting, too. "From the maker of Taken", it boasts. This movie is directed by Antonio Negret, who has precisely not fuck nothing to do with Taken. However, the actual director of Taken - one Pierre Morel - is a producer of Overdrive. Someone who, and I'm generalising here, organises and interferes rather than brings any grand vision to the set. And he's this, along with ten other people. Which is a bit like saying "From the maker of Grace of Monaco" just because Adrian Politowski's name is attached to the project as well. I know this is a standard industry move - it still hacks me off. It's a lazy gimmick for a lazy audience*².

But y'know what? At 93 minutes Overdrive doesn't outstay its welcome, the scenery is gorgeous*³, the cars are shiny and the chase-cinematography is executed efficiently. And that's what's important here, right?

Okay, it's not The Fast & The Furious, but at least it isn't The Transporter Refuelled either…



It's got a fairly low-key release, so that probably won't be a decision you have to make.



*shrug*



It's not the worst.



Nah.



There isn't.



Level 2: Scott Eastwood's in this (every scene, pretty much), and he was also in 2014's Fury alongside Jason 'Inquisitor' Isaacs.





*¹ I particularly like the way that Andrew and Garrett mention to each other that they're brothers/half-brothers approximately every three minutes, in precisely the same way that actual, real-life brothers don't. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² There were two late arrivals for this screening. One 20 minutes into the film, the other 25. Now, given that there are 27 minutes of ads and trailers between the time on the board outside and the BBFC card appearing on-screen, that means these people were arriving 47 minutes+ after the ticket time. Which is fucking insane, frankly. I get antsy if I miss the first minute of a film because any establishing plot-point could have happened then. And while this is hardly the best movie for that example (yeah, they hadn't missed that much, to be fair), the point still stands. The only explanation other than monumental rudeness is that the stragglers were people who'd come out of a film further down the corridor and thought they'd chance their arm sneaking into another auditorium. Which is even worse... ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ That's not a euphemism for bikini-clad eye candy (which is at a welcomely surprising minimum here), I mean that the film's setting, Marseille, looks absolutely stunning. ^{[ BACK ]}



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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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