Posted on May 13, 2007

Does your car cost less than $200,000? Can you down a glass of Cristal before it goes zero to 60? Does your girlfriend own a skirt longer than four inches? Did she tell her plastic surgeon any size but double-D? If you answered yes to any of these questions, get the hell out of here. "Redline" is too much for you.

The film burrows its way into the most primal regions of the male brain with a barrage of testosterone fantasies ranging from somersaulting exotic cars to bikini-clad girls licking motorcycles. It's useless to try and extract the twisted wreck of a plot from the movie, but a few buzzwords like "kidnapping," "revenge," "gambling" and "rich douche bags" should point you in the right direction.

The closest thing the movie has to a hero is Carlo (Nathan Phillips, "Snakes on a Plane"), a soldier recently back from Iraq who is trying to avenge his brother's death. To call his acting wooden would be an insult to trees everywhere. They really should have just duct-taped a machine gun to a cardboard cutout of Ethan Hawke - it would have delivered a far more convincing performance than this guy.

His nemesis is a cracked out Angus MacFadyen, riding high from his epic turn as "fat protagonist" in "Saw III." He's a robe-wearing criminal boss living in a heavily guarded compound where girls dressed in silver spandex do synchronized yoga on the front lawn. His villain persona is more Austin Powers than James Bond, which might be funny if the film was a satire. Sadly, even though it's not, by the end you wouldn't be half surprised if he blasted off into space in a rocket powered Ferrari right before his impending capture.

He is joined by Eddie Griffin, whose character Infamous can best be described as a caricature of himself, shouting phrases like "damn!" and "oh!" He must have wrecked the producer's $1.2 million Enzo before shooting began, because in the film, no one lets him get within 10 feet of a steering wheel.

The only redeeming character in the film is Natasha (relative newcomer Nadia Bjorlin), a multi-talented rocker chick, racecar driver and ninja warrior. In addition to delivering at least five more believable lines than anyone else in the film (bringing the grand total up to five), she is the most physically perfect woman to appear on a movie screen in recent memory. It's even possible that she can act, but it's hard to tell when the script seems to be a collaborative effort between trained monkeys and first graders.

The millions of dollars worth of metal and silicone poured into this film bought it a quarter star. Nadia Bjorlin charmed me into another quarter. I couldn't live with myself if I went any higher than that. The producer of this movie goes to bed at night and dreams that he made the next "The Fast and the Furious," but instead he wakes up to a wrecked Ferrari and a horribly executed wreck called "Redline."

Redline
Chicago Releasing
1/2 star