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Born 2 Race Review

I first saw Born 2 Race on the shelf at Wal-Mart, and knew immediately I had to watch it. It looked like another half-baked Fast & Furious rip-off à la 200 MPH; good for a few laughs but little else. It even had the number-in-the-title silliness of 2 Fast, 2 Furious. So I went home and added it to my Netflix queue, and the next time I had some spare time I gave it a look.

Then the confusion set in.

Likeable characters? Decent acting? An actual script with a story arc? What madness was this? It turns out that I had accidentally stumbled into a legitimately good movie.

First, the characters: it starts out with the main character, Danny Krueger, acting like an ass and generally being an unlikeable twerp. He has a golden opportunity that he blows thanks to his recklessness, letting down pretty much everyone he knows. The story goes on to follow his growth into a better - if still flawed - adult. It was surprising to me, as few movies manage to have a character go through such a large change successfully. A big part of that success is due to Joseph Cross, who provides Danny with enough depth to make a full character. He's helped by John Pyper-Ferguson, who plays his father Frank. Like Cross, he creates a whole character out of what could have easily been a walking cliché.

Not that the movie is entirely free of these: Brando Eaton doesn't get much to do with Jake Kendall beyond "standard teenage villain," and Nicole Badaan has a similar problem as "standard hot girlfriend" Jessica. They're not completely flat, and do well in their respective roles, but the story really focuses on Danny (and, to a lesser degree, Frank)...so the supporting characters are there just enough to move things along.

The most surprising part of the movie, though, was the attention to detail with regards to the cars & racing scenes. The filmmakers were genuine car guys, so we had no embarrassments with backwards-facing engines, nonsensical jargon, or flat-out magic. The cars generally behaved the way they should have, accidents and performance enhancements require work, and the drivers behave as if they've actually been in cars before. My personal favorite of these scenes was one where Danny's car was sabotaged: in the few seconds between his realization of the problem and the resulting crash, he actually does several actions that are usually glossed over (or omitted entirely) from other movies. In fact, the only real problem I had relating to the car scenes was the extremely slow response by emergency personnel during a sanctioned NHRA event. I know it was done for dramatic effect, but it still bugs me when people in the audience can get to the scene of an on-track crash before the rescue team. Other than that, this was a very well-done movie that goes way beyond what it needed to do. If you like cars, I highly recommend checking this out.

Collector/Modeler Interest:
There are several 2002 - 2004 Impreza models out there, including one by Revell that I built as Danny's ride.

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