Though \Torque"" may appear to be a complete failure of a movie, there are 10 minutes of the film that rise above the other 70. Because of those 10 minutes, ""Torque"" manages to avoid utter disaster and instead become something more like a bad accident.
The movie begins with a motorcycle zipping through the barren California landscape behind two souped-up cars. As if to show the superiority of a bike, the motorcycle blazes past the cars and into the horizon. Eventually stopping at a gas station, Cary Ford (Martin Henderson) reveals himself as a road rebel with a healthy squint. The drivers of the cars he passed pull up and Ford kicks the daylights out of them with a tire iron.
The only reason this opening sequence is worth noting is because it occupies about seven of the 10 good minutes of ""Torque."" At this point, the movie is still within the realm of physics. The movie observes such natural laws as these: When a man has his head shoved through a windshield, he will stop fighting, and wheelies are possible, but not for miles at a time. But then the movie goes downhill at 150 miles per hour.
Ford is framed for the murder of Trey Wallace's (Ice Cube) brother and has to flee. He escapes Los Angeles with his old flame, Shane (Monet Mazur), Dalton (Jay Hernandez) and Val (Will Yun Lee). With Wallace's motorcycle gang on their tail, the police setting up barricades and another gang after him, Ford has to get back to Los Angeles and clear his name.
The plot is surprisingly the most believable part of ""Torque."" The events of the movie consist of little more than impossible stunts and the thin dialogue that connects them. Every time it looks like a plot or subplot (imagine that) is forming, the movie flashes to somebody's hands on the handlebars and cuts to another chase scene.
""Torque"" provides plenty of chase scenes-too many, in fact. Instead of developing and drawing them out, ""Torque"" packs them in like people in a crowded elevator. There are so many excuses to send one bike after another that one chase scene only had the initial revving of bikes and did not even show the actual pursuit. Where ""The Fast and the Furious"" produced stunts that were barely believable, the action in ""Torque"" is a leap beyond skeptical plausibility. Watching one motorcycle run up a grain elevator and onto a moving train is acceptable, but seeing another bike follow is inexcusable.
This sort of excess, rather than giving the movie the chrome polish it wants, only serves to tear another scrape across its veneer. Rather than using the action as a well-timed distraction, the movie parades it around at every possible moment. There are no pauses and there need to be some. Racing can become very boring when that is all that happens.
After an hour, ""Torque"" becomes something like a NASCAR race with too many barked commands that stand in for acting. The little acting that does stick out is Henderson's suggestions of Ford's depth. Of course, anyone who is reminiscing about the beauty of Thailand before smacking someone with his helmet is horribly out of place.
There are three other minutes in the movie that seem out of sync. In one scene, some yuppie bikers try to take pictures of tattooed-and-leather-wearing bikers. They do not get their picture but at least the audience gets a laugh. That little bit of humor in addition to the seven minute opening sequence are the only moments worthy of viewing in ""Torque.\
