From Deseret News archives:
'Redline' is agonizing 95 minutes
For those who find "The Fast and the Furious" series too mentally challenging comes "Redline," an overproduced vroom-a-thon involving variations on a theme by NASCAR.
While the production was clearly expensive, and there is a splash of dazzle in the glossy visuals, the project stands as a monument to waste and extravagance. I have seen more imaginative projects created with construction paper, glitter glue and elbow macaroni.
There is a story involving high-stakes racing, a despicable counterfeiter (Angus Macfayden) and a delectable driver who moonlights with a rock band (Nadia Bjorlin, of TV's "Days of Our Lives").
The fanciful plot, with the baddie kidnapping the beauty's mother to compel her to join his racing team, seems to have been cribbed from Soap Opera Digest, as well. It hardly matters, though, because the disorderly story is merely a clothesline on which the filmmakers hang visually dyslexic close-ups of spinning tires, heaving bosoms, crunching metal, partying starlets and flying fists.
"Redline" is a two-minute idea chasing its tail for an agonizing 95 minutes. The racing scenes are shot in what my friend Kevin Murphy calls "Confuse-O-Vision," an aggressively incoherent editing style that results in the viewer's terminal bafflement.
And my expectations for the movie were so high! Oh, wait, no they weren't. I was really looking forward to "Redline" for one reason: Eddie Griffin. His raucous sense of humor has raised the bar on more than one mediocre project (if you haven't seen "Undercover Brother," you've missed a riot). Unfortunately, his presence as a high-rolling hip-hop impresario is little more than a walk-on cameo.
Still, I will fondly remember the singularly strange sequence in which he disciplines one sassy member of his entourage by landing his private jet on a two-lane highway, throwing her and her luggage off the plane, and taking off again. Not much of a joke outside its context, admittedly, but in this aggressively stupid feature it stands out like a moment of Dada genius.
"Redline" is rated PG-13 for violence, illegal and reckless behavior, sexual content, language and drug references. Running time: 95 minutes.
