The Movie Mix Bag

Below are some links we referenced during the episode:

• Henry Halicki – Car Crash King
• No Man’s Land vs Fast & the Furious (1)
• No Man’s Land vs Fast & the Furious (2)
• Forbes Articles on “The Lost Bullet”
• Drivetribe Article on the Renault R21

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

What’s going on everyone, and welcome to another installment of Brake Fix. I’m your host, Brad, aka The Triple Six. With me, as always, is our co host, Eric. On today’s episode, we’re going to do a movie mixed bag, a review of four different car adjacent movies, Board Racer, the biopic about IndyCar legend Scott Dixon, the original cult classic Gone in 60 Seconds from 1974, No Man’s Land, starring Charlie Sheen and D.

B. Sweeney from 1987, and finally, Lost Bullet, a French film that debuted during the pandemic on Netflix in 2020. With us tonight is a panel of GTM members, Crutch, Chrissy, Mountain Man Dan, [00:01:00] Tanya, and the first lady of GTM, Jessica, to join us tonight to discuss all these different films. And with that, let’s get into it.

So first up, we have Born Racer. Well, one, it was a fitting timing to watch that since Scott Dixon has actually won the first three races this season for the, uh, the pandemic season. But I think it actually did a really good job of balancing the The commitment that’s involved in being a professional race car driver and the risks that are involved and how their family deals with those risks because they touched on some of the tragic incidents that have happened in the past and Scott Dixon’s horrible crash in the 2017 Indy 500.

Just the initial, initial response that his wife had when that accident happened and how everything came together after the fact. So it was, it was a nice behind the scenes look from that point of view, in my opinion. And I don’t know about you guys, but I picked up on a couple hidden messages there, like Tony Kanaan at the end, you know, he kind of wrapped up some thoughts and he mentioned something about like, you know, people just [00:02:00] have to adapt to the racer’s lifestyle.

And if you don’t like it tough, I mean, that was really the gist. There was something else that Emma had said. You know, Scott’s not happy unless he’s winning. I thought it was more than stating the fact that he’s not happy unless he’s going fast, unless I picked up in a different spot because they did hit on that a couple of times, like her speaking about that competition as are just like the thrill type aspect, I guess, is what they were trying to point out about what a lot of race car drivers do.

I’ve mentioned before, especially with the motocross type stuff. I relate to that because that’s more thrill seeking than, you know, some other aspects of motor sports. Sure. Going 230 mile an hour in a open cockpit car is rather intense. I’ve never experienced it, but who knows? Maybe I will one day. And they did focus a lot on his wife.

And I agree with Mike that you saw the more personal side of it with his daughters and all that. But there were certain scenes that I didn’t feel like they were a value add. They followed her running for a while. And I’m like, okay, yeah, she was an Olympic runner. I get it. But I mean, do I need to see her putting on her shoes and [00:03:00] getting ready to go for a jog?

I mean, it just didn’t provide anything. And it, it felt like filler. I don’t know, Mike. I also liked how I gave the background of when he was a youth and was out carding and stuff like that, and how he got into cars. And racing in general and how even I like how they even had members of his pit crew that used to do carting and stuff as they were growing up, grew up and became pit members, and it shows how he was one of the fortunate ones that started out and actually made it to a professional driving position.

But there’s so many of us that never make to that professional spot. There’s that ability we can get onto a crew for a professional spot, which would say there are guys that you know, aspire to do that, that never make it behind the wheel. Even just being part of a big team like that, it makes it on a professional level, it’d be an amazing thing.

So Mike, are there posters of Scott Dixon all over New Zealand since you spent some time? No, I did not see it, but he is, he is mentioned when you’re watching Australian supercars, because they talk about the New Zealand and Australian drivers that have made it big in other international series. But yeah, it was, it was [00:04:00] interesting seeing his time back in, back in Auckland and, and hearing his family talk about the sacrifices that they made for, for him to be able to.

Proceed with his career as he, as he was growing up, it was also kind of interesting when they started doing the training regimen stuff and when he was sitting in the SIM and the other guy was sitting there with, with the device attached to his head to simulate G forces while he’s in the SIM on his neck to stress his neck muscles in preparation for being in the car.

So, so some of those just short little snippets were actually just kind of interesting behind the scenes look to things that you don’t think about. To touch on another thing that Mike was saying is like with the training with the guy yanking on his head and stuff or G forces in his neck, I remember growing up and seeing like NASCAR guys, they would be sitting in a chair and it would be a steering wheel hooked to basically a shock where they would be turning it and that would be the force that they’d be working their arms to try to build up their muscle strength in their arms.

We’re constantly doing the left turns. So seeing the fact how they were using all the concepts, like, you know, touching the different things on the screen to [00:05:00] get his neurological feed and responses, I thought was very interesting in that aspect of the training stuff they do. I’ll get that on Forza. What are you talking about?

The other interesting, weird little thing that was touched on was when they’re talking to his tire engineer and his tire engineer is talking about having worked for Mario Andretti and Encina and, and saying, you know, I see in Scott Dixon, the same type of Drive that I saw in these other drivers. And it makes you want to give even more than a hundred percent of yourself when you’re trying to support them as a, as a team member.

So I think you, you’ve got a great segue for me and Tanya on that one, because I wanted to rename it board racer. Because, I mean, I struggled to get through this film. And it’s not very long. It’s, what, 88 minutes? Did you say Bourne Racer or Board Racer? Oh, I said Board Racer earlier. I don’t know. It was a chore.

There wasn’t a lot of dialogue. I did feel like I was watching another film from the 70s. You [00:06:00] guys are not selling me. I’m going to go watch it now. Just, I don’t know. That tire guy was more interesting than Scott Dixon was. I want to know about that dude. I want to know about his history. I mean, he worked with Senna.

He worked with Andretti. I mean, wow. Right. I mean, it was just more interesting than what I saw in the film. Yeah. I mean, I, I was captivated for the 10 seconds of the tire guide, but it wasn’t a biopic about Senna or Mario Andretti or the tire guy. So I understand why he didn’t go into his. But so to add one, I took his speaking in a different route because I was watching the different things he was doing, prepping tires and stuff like that.

Now, like in one, one of the scenes, he’s actually measuring the diameters of the tire afterwards. And the scientific curiosity in me is like, okay, what’s he doing that for? How often does he do it? You know, I’d be interested in like the scientific mathematical aspect of that sort of stuff as well, just for that.

Side of me that’s always intrigued by that sort of stuff. Again, that tire guy needs an entire movie to [00:07:00] himself. He is super interesting, like what he does. Actually, if they had done a whole aspect of the Ganassi team, that would have been an interesting take on the whole situation. Because I think focusing an hour and a half on Scott, it just left you kind of like, meh.

Is it just me or did the Quote unquote, associate engineer, Kate Gundlach. Did that make any sense to anybody? Why we were focusing so much attention on her when we weren’t talking about Scott? Like, I don’t understand what she did for the team other than obviously she was a part of the team, but why were the documentary makers so fixated on bringing her in every time they couldn’t fill the scene with.

Something with respect to Scott, I don’t know why they turned to her for that stuff. But as I mentioned earlier, She was the one that brought out the fact of like she carded and everything when she was younger never made to being in the seat of a professional car But she was part of that team because everybody aspires to be the person driving the car But there are plenty of positions other than that growing up through the motorsports world that you [00:08:00] can fill I think it may have been a way to pull people into You know, all those important roles to help out the actual driver.

I mean, I’m jealous. I’d love to work on the race team. So, I mean, I, I aspire to be her or that, uh, the tire guy, right. That we’ve talked about. I just, I don’t know. It just felt like it was overplayed in a way. It’s just like, we kept going back to her. It’s like, let’s talk to somebody else on the race team.

There’s other people here. And I don’t know, it’s just odd. I mean, she was the assistant engineer. She is the person sitting next to the crew chief on the pit box during the race. So it’s not like she was just an inconsequential random team member. The footage they had of her at the track was her sitting on the pit box next to whoever the crew chief was monitoring telemetry and, and doing that kind of stuff.

So she, she has a more critical role than random crew member A who works air gun that keeps jamming. On every pit stop Well, what’s that guy’s name they kept saying focus on whatever his name was i was like, oh my god [00:09:00] So that’s something we got to bring up talking about born racer, dude Scott dixon has the worst pit crew in the world I mean, I don’t know what to say like the longest pit stops the most calamities.

I’m surprised a wheel didn’t fall off We didn’t see a lot of his awesome driving maneuvers passing people on track, but we saw a lot of messed up pit stops, unfortunately. Yeah, I didn’t know if they were trying to pass the buck or place the blame, but it was like, oh, that pit stop was 28 seconds. I’m like, yeah, well, half, half the motor fell off, of course.

Like, I don’t know what we were looking at sometimes. I’m like, why is this relevant, right? So, I don’t know. They could have done better. For the long pit stops I’m thinking maybe they focused a little on that to put more focus on how good a driver he is for the fact even with these slow pit stops. He is great on track where it’s making up for that time that they’re losing in the pits.

Despite being kneecapped at every turn, he almost won. Yeah, but that, that, that theme gets old too after a while. I mean, in [00:10:00] general, the movie, the way they, or the documentary, the way they shot it was very slow, which maybe speaks to Scott himself since, I think several people mentioned how he doesn’t talk a lot and he’s a pretty quiet guy.

And if they were trying to reflect in through the documentary, I think that came out, because I’m not sure if he spoke for more than five minutes. total for the whole documentary. I mean, you saw a lot of shots of him and there was dramatic music, but I was just going to say, I can’t remember Scott actually saying more than 20 words throughout the entire thing.

Like, I don’t, I can’t, I’m sitting here thinking about it as you all were talking. About how he’s quiet and everything. I understand his wife did most of the talking during the documentary. I don’t remember him saying anything at all. It was, everybody was talking about him. I don’t remember him actually speaking.

And when he did talk, it was like teller. He was always talking in a voiceover. [00:11:00] Himself speaking. There were, there were, there were a couple of moments. I mean, five minutes is an exaggeration, but it wasn’t as, as much as it could have been, it would have been. Maybe nice to hear a little bit more about his youth because he was carting by the age of seven or eight.

And he, he was the youngest person to get a provisional driver’s license at 13 in New Zealand, which was a big deal so that he could go race. You know, and Nissan Centro, I think it was, or whatever. It would have been interesting to see a little bit more about his youth progression and how he came into, you know, Indy.

I, I mean, I learned a lot in terms of him and wasn’t very familiar with him, quite honestly, before the documentary. So, but in, in terms of the pace and, and everything, the, it was a little bit slow. I, I would agree with that and I share all those same sentiments, but one thing I didn’t like was that his past Was done as a flashback versus a lot of other documentaries about race car drivers are done chronologically.

So there’s something to be said about that [00:12:00] particular style of documentary. For me, I didn’t like the, okay, we’re going to talk about what happened at, you know, Indy, and then we’re going to flashback to New Zealand and then we’re going to jump forward to the next race. And then we’re going to flash back to New Zealand.

It kind of got tiring because I wanted to know the progression like you did. But I also feel like it gave them an excuse to skip over a lot of stuff that might’ve happened in his formative years, because all we did was talk about carding and then IndyCard. And there’s a sub story there about him going to Williams to try out for formula one and stuff like that.

And it all kind of got left on the table. And I think those are important turning points in his story. And then some of the races, you know, we only got to see like two corners of Detroit and like, show me the track or even mid Ohio. I recognized it because I’ve driven there and I was like, Oh my God, they’re a middle.

And then it was just like, okay, we’re in the pit box again. Let’s move on to the next thing. And the same thing with the Glen. You know, the most exciting thing there was when Newgarten parked it in the wall coming out of the pit, and then [00:13:00] the rest of it was just like, uh, okay. Yeah, I wasn’t really sure what they were trying to get at with, with the whole biopic, because it didn’t go into, it would have been like other ones you watch, the son of documentary and things like that.

It’s like, You see a lot of footage of races and, and, you know, awesome passes, and this, that, and the other, and I don’t know, they showed one or two clips here and there, and they just moved on and would, you know, have silence and pretty music in the background. What did they want the viewer to get out of this documentary?

I mean, I learned something about him, but I feel like there was more that they could have portrayed. Yes, it would have been nice if, if Scott Dixon was, was more vocal. And I think it’s just, as Tanya, I think said, I think it actually does just represent him. Even when he was talking to the reporters, when he got out of the med center at Indy, very brief, whereas a lot of other drivers will, will hold longer conversations with him.

people as they go along and even the announcer, the clip of him racing the next race at Detroit, [00:14:00] the answers are saying, well, Scott didn’t want us to talk about his leg. So it’s almost like he doesn’t, he doesn’t like being talked about and doesn’t like talking about himself, but then they made a biopic about him.

Right. So that, that leads into one of the questions I had going into this conversation, which is. A couple of times during the film they refer to Scott Dixon as the greatest of all time. I don’t know how you guys feel about this or whether you agree or disagree or the listeners agree and disagree to that statement, but does he really have the same appeal as a Senna or a Schumacher or a Fangio?

I mean, I understand it’s not the same level. Does that really matter at the end of the day? From a fandom perspective, does he really have the same appeal to you or I as Senna does or Schumacher? I’d say as a personality, no. As a skilled driver, yes. And there’s, there’s a lot of people that, that fall down that hole.

As a personality, I can’t stand Kyle Busch. I have to admire him because he’s a great driver. I just hate when he wins. Especially when he wins in the minor leagues and racks [00:15:00] up 90 some wins. You know, it’s exciting to watch him drive. It’s exciting to watch him race. And then once he gets out of the car, I could care less.

I’ll say I can definitely agree with crutch on that and aspect of especially like how they are in the car. And as for personality, he doesn’t seem to have much. He’s very subtle personality, not very flamboyant like a lot because a lot of race car drivers are very flashy. He’s the exact opposite of that.

He doesn’t talk about himself and things like that. So In a way, many race car drivers are much like the military. We had our fighter pods and they were very cocky, very egotistical guys, and very full of themselves. And a lot of drivers are like that, but he doesn’t seem to be. He’s more low key, but that is a Kiwi tree.

That is a cultural trait of New Zealand where. They try not to shine and stand out. So that might be just a product of, of being from New Zealand and having that upbringing. It’s very strange when you’re an American meeting a bunch of Kiwis and they just, they won’t talk about themselves. They don’t, you know, boast about their accomplishments or anything.

They’re just like, whatever. I, [00:16:00] I showed up and I did this and I’m done. And I can, I can admire that as a trait in people. I can admire the fact he lets his driving speak for itself. That’s the other thing about this film. It just hit Netflix. And the content was three years old. So I don’t know if they’re just kind of scraping the barrel here, just trying to put something out to keep people interested.

Same thing with Gentleman Driver and some of the other stuff that’s come out. But Netflix buys stuff from other places. So it could have been on any like speed channel or any one of those other kind of services. And then finally Netflix bought it. And now you see it. Any other final comments on Board Racer before we get to the good stuff?

I would say if you’re not a IndyCar fan or a Scott Dixon fan, probably pass on it. It’s not going to be done in such a way that’s going to be very intriguing or have you kind of at the edge of your seat as a non car or maybe a lesser car enthusiast. I’m going to speak for Sam. He thought it was awesome and none of us know what we’re talking about.

I think Bored [00:17:00] Racer or Born Racer is the, the documentary equivalent of watching an IndyCar race. No, no. An Indy race is much more interesting than this documentary. It was like watching Formula One. Officially unsubstantiated. I wasn’t trying to sell it. Sorry. No, thank you. All right. Well, I think we’ve covered that ad nauseum at this point.

So let’s get to the good stuff. Let’s go. Back in time. Let’s go to 1974. Ohhhh. With the cult classic, Gone in 60 Seconds. I got my notes. Go for it. You start us off. Start you off? Uh, it was like the, how long was it? 90? 90 minutes? 200 hours. I don’t know, but it was like a porno. Seven years. Never, never got to the good stuff.

It was just like the porn music and everything. I had to feel it had the same acting level, but then it never got to the, there was no money shot. It never got anywhere. Trash the [00:18:00] whole time. I got to add something there because since you went there. As, as the film progressed and we get to that epic jump scene towards the end, which I’m sure we’ll talk about more.

It was like 15 minutes long. That slow motion burnout was like behind the green door. And if you’ve seen that, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So it got there, Brad, it definitely got there. So anyway, go ahead. I mean, I, I open it up to comments. I’ve just got a couple of questions. About the movie.

Like how come in the beginning, the, when they were looking for recruits for the crew, the black guy was like, Oh yeah, I saw him in playgirl magazine. Why was he reading playgirl magazine? Why would he know that that guy was in playgirl magazine? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe they’re free thinkers even. What? 50 years ago.

This is good. This is progressive. Maybe, maybe. And then why was there a tiger in the parked car at the golf course or wherever they were? What? Yeah. [00:19:00] Tiger wasn’t there in the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds. There was a snake or something. Snake in the Hummer. Snake in the Hummer, yeah, in the parking garage.

Yep. I think that’s a euphemism, the snake in the Hummer. I would actually like a hot water heater, like document hider. That was cool. That was really James Bond for that movie. But move too slow. The cops are knocking at the door.

How many of you have seen both versions of this movie now? There were two scenes that were almost identical. The drugs are in the Cadillac. Yeah, and then the jump scene was, it’s not identical, but it’s, it was probably taken, inspiration was taken from that scene. I think the newer one did it a lot better, although not as realistic.

Yeah, the old one, the old one was a little more realistic. Except that whole, Burnout scene, but we’ll get into that. So I want to, I want to go gut reactions on this [00:20:00] movie from everybody. So we’ll start with Mike, what your gut reaction on the film. Oh, it’s horrible. It’s like a train wreck. A lot of this has to do with how they actually filmed this.

You have all this action going on on screen and then they, they dialogue it all by voiceover. Cause they couldn’t get a microphone out to the boat that was next to the airplane. Like there’s this whole conversation going on. You’re seeing things happen, but. That conversation is not actually happening there.

They’re just changing money, but the conversation is being played over dialogue mistakes that they could have taken two seconds to rerecord either. They’re trying to portray them as fumbling idiots, or they need to do more reshoots. Just all the voiceovers, the collect call to the wedding.

There’s so many things, right? The scene where they’re walking and talking through like the park, but everything is out of focus. So, Chrissy, Chrissy, what about you? What did you think? I wasn’t sure what was going on. Like, the movie [00:21:00] starts. And it’s like a construction scene. And you’ve seen like the footage from like Sesame Street, like back in the seventies when they were like, go out in some parks with like big construction equipment and crap.

I thought, like, I was like, what is this? And then like the wedding thing happened. And like, I mean, the cat thing made me laugh. And, but I was just like, I don’t know. And I said to Mike, I, it’s like, this guy produced the film with his own money. But he apparently had never seen a film before. I always take into consideration, A, it’s from the 70s.

So, filmatography at that time wasn’t the greatest to begin with. So, I have to always factor that in. As for storyline, it really was long and drawed out to me. It was very difficult to watch it the whole way through. But I can imagine that back then, because there were no movies very common like that, And I guess that would have been considered huge action at [00:22:00] that time.

Because if you compare it to other movies, you didn’t have that sort of scenes going on. So, the concept for it was maybe possible, the follow through wasn’t there. I don’t think the cameras had the ability, definitely the audio stuff wasn’t at the ability needed. I’d say it’s like this, it’s Hollywood. I can’t, you can’t take anything they take as serious, it’s out there for, Entertainment.

Was the old one entertaining? Eh, kind of. But it’s, I’m, it’s not on my top ten list to watch. Jess. When Eric told me that that movie was shot without a script, I was never less surprised in my entire life. It was so bad. I mean, it was one of those, like, the movie ended credits and Eric and I look at each other and we’re like, Well, that was, pardon my language, fucking awful.

Like, he was so angry, like, I cannot express to you, like, I know it’s his turn soon, [00:23:00] but like, I cannot express to you how angry Eric was until he fell asleep that night. And he was angry when he woke up in the morning, for the record. He was still like God damn it. That movie was awful. It was awful. I can’t believe it even made it.

Terrible. Absolutely terrible. But like, I guess if we watch it again, because we know it’s terrible, it would be really funny. But for our first time watching it was so bad. And the voiceover, Mike, you’re so right. Like, I was like, do you think they just didn’t have boom mics? Like, why do you think they had to do this?

Like, I will say, that is the second time I watched it, because I watched it a long time ago, but I had to re watch it to refresh my memory of just how bad it was for this. It does not get better on the second watch. No. Well, to Jess’s point, I’m wondering if it would have been better as a silent film, like no dialogue, but just Just the car sounds, [00:24:00] even if like when people are supposed to be talking, just like car sounds, it would have been great.

It would have sounded just as good. So my next point, I’m halfway through the movie and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, why they’re stealing these cars, where’s the drama, like in the, in the remake, there’s a lot of drama. His brother gets in trouble with the wrong guys and he’s got to go save them.

And then finally we get halfway through and it’s a David and Goliath story. It’s the little guy versus big insurance. Oh my God. They’re going after Geico. Now this is something I can get behind. So they tried stealing that one car from the dealership. It was like a challenger or a Cuda or something. This movie was shot in 74.

The Eleanor Mustang was a 73. Why not just walk down to the local Ford dealer? Take one for a test drive and never come back. I don’t understand why they had to go through all this rigmarole. They looked for them. How many did they find that they couldn’t steal like 17, 000 before they could actually take one?

I [00:25:00] mean, what the fuck this, this was like a one year old Mustang. This is not, this is not like the, the GT 500 or GT three 50 or whatever from the remake, it’s like a, this rare, rare classic that you can’t find. You can walk down to the fricking. Piggly wiggly and find one in the parking lot. And it’s a terrible mustang too.

It’s one nobody wants. Well, apparently he wanted it. It was the last real mustang according to them. Until the next one turned out. And then the two of my favorite quotes from the movie, the first one was the little old lady talking to the police and I ruined my perfectly good umbrella.

And then that was 25 percent of the dialogue. That was, that was, that was the best line of the movie. The second best line is during the Eleanor chase. On the voiceover, there’s this couple that says, Sounds like it’s finally over. And then the woman says, Finally? That’s how I felt at the end [00:26:00] of the movie.

It sounds like it’s finally over. Finally, it’s over. You didn’t like the quote at the end? See ya later, Billy. Okay, so, to touch on that, Why, why is it whenever they show, like, young African American kids, They’re always smoking pot and dubbing it up, And this like giant Cadillac slow rolling down down Crenshaw Boulevard, but why why do they always have to?

I don’t understand that. That’s just a little tangent that it kind of hurts me a little bit, but I was gonna make the same tangent because I didn’t understand and we went back to them. What? Not once. Not twice, but three times and they were the part of the ending too, and I’m like you have got to be kidding me I mean it provided zero value to the movie whatsoever, right?

Well, so I want to I want to fix a couple things They were stealing the car for a drug kingpin, but you probably missed it because it was in a voiceover I muted the, I muted the movie partway through. I turned it into a silent film. And, [00:27:00] yeah, that scene where they’re stealing back the car that they’ve vinslapped from a dealership in their town.

I mean, that’s just bad car, car stealing right there. I mean, you, you vinslap a car and then, Put a vanity tag back on it and try and sell it locally, you know, but they do it all during the day. Do they not have nighttime in California? Okay. Since we’re talking about that, what about the scene at the airport where they’re literally standing on the curb at arrivals and they’re like, Oh, here comes that burgundy rolls.

And the dude walks away and leaves his keys in it. And it was like the third car they did that to until they tried to quote unquote steal the first Eleanor. And I was like, okay. You gotta be kidding me. This is not how this movie is gonna go. We got 48 cars and we’re gonna literally stand here on the curb and just wait for him to drop them off like it’s Hertz rental?

I was like, what is this? So to highlight on Brad’s comment about no, uh, nighttime in Los Angeles, You saw how bad the filming was during the day. Do you seriously want to have tried to see what it would have looked [00:28:00] like at night? It could have been like Cloverfield. There was one night time scene. They stole, he stole the one Eleanor, I think, from the guys who were out there at night.

He borrowed it. And then they returned the car because Because it wasn’t insured. Do you remember that whole scene though? I was like, What is happening? All you see are really dim headlights. Like, they could be anywhere. They could be driving around a parking lot. There is no, you see nothing. It was so bad.

It’s because they were driving around the parking lot for like 15 minutes before he took the car home. With a camera they borrowed from the library with 1970s headlights. God, so, so to Dan’s point earlier about being a 70s film, there’s no other films before that. I will, I will correct you there. The Seven Ups had long car chase scenes, Bullitt had long car chase scenes, but what I felt Herbie.

Herbie, yeah, Herbie. What I felt was a ripple, was a scene [00:29:00] towards the end of the movie where he’s got 93 Chrysler police cars of every shape and form that existed. Chasing him down that what six lane highway all of a sudden and it was like Vanishing Point which came out three years before Gone in 60 Seconds and I felt like he kind of ripped that scene off a little bit from Vanishing Point because if you’ve seen the original one he’s in the Challenger he’s headed towards the bulldozers with the cops behind him and then you know boom the movie kind of ends so I felt like it was a Kowalski moment there and I was like man I’ve already seen this before.

I’m just going to say, for massive amounts of cop cars chasing a vehicle down the highway, OJ did it best. I will say, the scene, very much towards the end, with the car wash, I mean, talk about, like, you knew they ran out of ideas at that point, right? And you’re just like, they don’t know how to end this thing, because it’s been 45 minutes that he’s been driving around like a maniac.

But I nearly fell out of my chair. When the lady came out and he did this like terrible [00:30:00] car swap and the wrecked Eleanor comes out of the car wash and then she just faints into the dude. It’s like you have got to be kidding me. You know, I thought that was probably the best comedic part of the movie in my opinion, but otherwise, God, what a dumpster fire.

But it’s a brilliant dumpster fire. when you understand the backstory of it. But let’s let Dan get his comment in it. Well, I’m just going to say, it’s somewhat of a cult classic, but how many cult classics are really like, Phenomenal movies. They normally aren’t that great. Yeah, but you could say rocky horror is a cult classic And there’s ones like reefer madness.

That’s a cult classic and that’s a train wreck and a half Mall rats and clerks called classics. They’re all not that as bad as this Okay, I gotta say any of the skew view films i’m fans of so I think it’s the only person that now is on the other side of the argument. We all think this is You A flaming [00:31:00] bag of dog food that somebody left on our doorstep that we were somehow obligated to watch.

So she’s actually, surprisingly, in the camp, has flipped overnight from raging dumpster fire to epic movie, and she’s going to explain to us why. More, more, more, more, more, more! I mean, it is a raging dumpster fire that you just want to stand next to and bask in the glow and the warmth of those flames.

Okay. When you understand what went into this movie or didn’t go into this movie, for me, it completely changed my perspective and appreciation for it. I went into it completely agree with what I was saying and I went into it fully aware that this is a 1974 movie, which means it was going to have terrible dialogue, very little dialogue, poor acting skills, [00:32:00] cinematography wasn’t going to be there, and it was going to be long.

Because in the 70s, that’s kind of how a lot of the movies were. But Chrissy mentioned it earlier, the Henry Halecki, known as Toby, the car crash king, as he’s been, uh, come to be known as. Yes, he did direct, produce, fund, star in this movie. It was his baby. All the cars basically were his, so he wrecked his own vehicles in this movie.

As Jess said, there was no script. There was barely a script. There was a few Swishes of dialogue just to kind of guide things, but there was no script and it was obvious. The dialogue was lacking. There really were no professional actors. The other actors were his friends or family members. Okay. So it’s a GTM movie all of a sudden, see?

That’s what I’m taking from this. But this man, we talk about Send it. This [00:33:00] man is full send, okay? That is how he lived his life. He didn’t get permission to make this movie. The pedestrians were real pedestrians, okay? The car crashes were all real! People almost died. People not of the movie were getting into accidents.

People were watching, thinking a real life police chase was happening. He didn’t tell anybody. For all we know, the umbrella woman, that was real. He probably was upset about her umbrella. I mean, my mind is blown when I knew that. And it’s a 40 minute car chasing, the longest car chasing in the was the only car.

to be in that scene. It was 40 minutes of that one car. It took all that beating and it still runs today. He installed a NASCAR roll cage in it. It was a really good [00:34:00] drive tribe article that that outlines a lot of this. You can find more information on Wikipedia where they pulled a lot about, I guess the DVD has some backstories in there that you can get if you own the DVD.

And we’ll post some links to this stuff for the list. He installed a NASCAR roll cage to protect himself. The transmission got chained to the body so it wouldn’t fall out. There’s like three inch thick steel plates underneath the thing to keep everything inside. He apparently MacGyver individual locking rear brakes.

I think he tweaked the engine so he even had more power. I mean, he drove the thing that whole 40 minutes. It took that beating. The scene, if you recall, he’s going down the highway and he’s going to do what most people do on the highway. Take that exit from the left lane and he spins out. Was unplanned.

That was an accident. He hit that telephone pole at over 90 miles an hour. He bit it, folks! He for real bit it! Okay? And he got hurt, and we had to pause. [00:35:00] But they had the footage, and they used it, and they picked back up when he was feeling better. From that scene, they kept down telephone pole, and they kind of picked it all back up and started going.

The car still ran. They had to fix it up a little bit, but it still ran. That scene was real. Okay? All the other wrecked police cars, all that stuff, real. They were actually crashing them. The Cadillac seen at the dealership. Supposedly, the, the dealership owner? That was the dealership owner. His face of upset when the cars got crashed?

It’s cause they accidentally got crashed. He put two of his own Cadillacs at the front line of the line of Cadillacs at the dealer, and when they T boned the first cars, According to the information, it was only supposed to impact the first two cars, which were his, except they put some oil underneath the cars to make them stop, except they kind of hit it too much force, a little too much, uh, oil, and he totaled McFeeler’s cars, and he had to buy [00:36:00] them.

I mean, this is some of the epicness, and I turn around, and I’m like, Oh my god, I mean it was the most authentic car chasing that you’re ever gonna see. Because Fast and the Furious can’t compete with that. CGI, this, that, and the other car, flipping and barrel rolling. No! He, he launched Eleanor off that ramp.

It was like he made a 30 foot high, I think, almost 130 foot in distance. He compacted 10 vertebrae on the landing. He legit launched that car without any gas catapult turbines like they do today. No, he drove it. He sent it. 40 minutes of full send with the, with people not even knowing it was real. I mean, at one point I thought like it’s red asphalt.

I mean, they had people crashing right on the bridge and all this stuff. And I was like, Oh my God, people are getting hurt in this. This is chaos because it was [00:37:00] people, it was legitimate chaos. And for that reason, The dumpster fire is amazing. So, with that being said, with this newfound knowledge, does it change your opinion of the movie?

It gives me a question. When he’s stopped in the park, surrounded by the cops, and there’s that one guy lying on the sidewalk in front of him, blocking the car’s path, and he crawls back, did that guy know what the hell was going on? I wondered that after reading some of this. Because there’s another scene, I think that was near the car dealership, where the blue Belvedere was, they were trying to like do the police blockade, and he was supposed to brake and then do like a, like a turn, except he missed the brake marker, and actually T Bone, like he almost killed the guy that was there, like the dude bailed, because he’s like, I think he missed the brake zone, and like, apparently in the movie, it’s all the real footage, like the dude dived out of the [00:38:00] way.

And all those guys clobbered. I mean, it was just full send. Full send. So were the cop cars real cop cars? No. So he bought all, so all the cars in there, he bought off, Uh, I forget where they were like a couple hundred bucks each or something So they weren’t like legitimate like the actual police cars, but representative of the police She’s probably got away with being 40 minutes because all the other cops said there’s other cops chasing him.

He’s fine So I read they’ve read 93 cars in that movie total but tanya’s got another little fun fact for when we go on who wants to be a millionaire This is a trilogy You Yes. Well, it’s a trilogy in the sense that he had three kind of movies. So he had another one that was called, um, Junkman, which I think he totaled something like over 200 cars or something ridiculous like that.

But there’s also [00:39:00] something very weird about how he took footage from Also Gone in 60 Seconds and reused it in this movie, etc, etc. But then he was actually going to make a second Gone in 60 Seconds. Which unfortunately he, because he is full send in his life, he actually passed away during the movie ’cause he was doing all his stunts.

He had some crazy stunt of this water tower that was gonna fall over when he pulled it with this dump truck. And unfortunately, um, as the story goes, some, there was a cable that prematurely snapped. And when it snapped, it cut a telephone pole or some sort down and it actually hit him. And so he basically died from the impact of that telephone pole hitting him.

Um, so who knows what that movie would have brought us. So what they ended up doing, I believe, is the third movie, kind of in his trilogy of movies, was Deadline Auto, which takes a lot of footage, I think, from what was going to be Gone in 60 Seconds 2. And does a whole other compilation of stealing [00:40:00] footage from Junkman, and then the first gone in 60 seconds.

I don’t know, it’s completely ridiculous. He died at, I think, 48 years old. So, in my head, this guy, I’m like, I wonder, if he had not passed away, like, how would car chase scenes been different today? Because he was very, obviously, authentic about it, and not safe. So clearly somebody would have came down on him and there would have been, you know, changes in the way he does things, but I, I really wonder now having seen that and learned a little bit more about him, how modern day car chases and car movies would have probably been completely different with his type of cinematic take.

With all the, uh, authentic reactions from people not being aware of what was going on. The thing that pops out to me is this was the 1970s automotive version of Blair Witch.

It was rough. It was rough. But no, I mean, now that we’ve gotten that information, I think I have a, like Tanya, I have a different [00:41:00] appreciation for it. I’ve got two points. One, I’m impressed. I’m a little less impressed because I was holding on for Tanya to say that they actually stole the cars. I’m impressed.

But that, that, that didn’t come because it is authentic as she made it sound. Maybe they actually did steal the cars. Maybe this was just a documentary on how ridiculous all these people were. It was jackass in the seventies. My second point is I still stand by the silent film idea, but I think it would be better if Tanya narrated like March of the Penguins and Morgan Freeman.

I think Tanya should narrate Golden 60 Seconds. I mean, there was the first 40 minutes and then there was the second 40 minutes. You just had to get past the first 40 minutes. You just have to skip Jar Jar Binks. I mean, it was terrible, but uh, knowing everything I know now, I’m just like, wow. So see you later, Billy.

Now, we’re gonna pop our collars, we’re gonna put on our leather cropped jackets, and fast [00:42:00] forward into 1987, with No Man’s Land, starring Charlie Sheen and D. B. Sweeney. Most of you know who Charlie Sheen is, you know, he was obviously very famous later on, uh, was it Two and a half men. Or he’s famous for a lot more than that.

DB Sweeney. Some of you may not recognize him right away until you see him. He was the, the co star on the movie, the cutting edge, which was pretty, pretty well known movie in the eighties. And when Tanya recommended this movie, she came to me and said, Hey, did you see this movie that’s on voodoo about stealing Porsches?

And I said, well, you had my attention in Porsches, so I got to go check this thing out. Little did I know what it was going to turn into. And I will say recommended is a very strong word I probably didn’t use. I think the appropriate term is she So, well, let’s do gut reaction on this movie. I’ve got some interesting little tidbits for this one as well.

So, [00:43:00] I thought it was interesting that they didn’t steal any non Niven Porsches. I mean, this is the 80s. There were plenty of other Porsches out there to steal. They don’t want a 924? What the hell’s wrong with them? That’s the one I’d go for. But I agree with you, Brad. I mean, I would have expected to see, especially in the, in the repair shops, some 944s, a 928, you know, something else.

It was just all 911s, which is, you know, neither here nor there. I wanted to see a 914, at least in the garage shop. And then I was, I think I talked about this a little bit on Slack, but

it’s essentially the same story as Point Break, as The fast and the furious, I mean, undercover police officer infiltrates. Falls in love, becomes best friends. Ted Verrick is a very 80s, you know, cocaine snorter name. So Ted is essentially Dominic Toretto. Oh, it’s not, he’s not a killer. He wouldn’t do it.

It’s not [00:44:00] his fault. No, no, no. And then Brian Spilner or, you know, Brian O’Connor or whatever. Who I thought, by the way, the actor who played him, what was it? B. Sweeney. Yeah. I thought it was John Cusack. They kind of have a very similar look. Because I was like, I didn’t know John Cusack was in this. No, no, no.

It was But yeah, it’s essentially the same movie as The Fast and the Furious. Basically when you break it down, it’s, it’s funny you bring that up. So that’s a major point. There’s a lot of articles about that. There’s, there’s some that we’ll post links to that people can read about. Obviously this came out 20 years before The Fast and the Furious that if and the premise is the same.

That scene with Randy Quaid in the diner when he is telling him about stuff and the beginning where he is working on the 3 56, which by the way is one of the inconsistency problems I have with the movie. ’cause that wasn’t a 3 56, it was some chopped up beetle. Kit car thing. And it was the only non 9 11 that we got to see.

And thankfully, we only really saw it one other time. And it was a rotting pile of mess. But that whole thing played out exactly like Fast and the Furious. And you can see where FNF [00:45:00] got its inspiration from now. At one point, as I’m giving Tanya the play by play watching the movie, she’s like, Oh, just wait, it turns into gone in 60 seconds.

And then it’ll come back to the Fast and the Furious. And I saw some of that in the film. And there’s a ton of inconsistencies. But the dialogue was pretty good. It had a decent story. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because it was written by Dick Wolf. And I don’t know if you guys are familiar with him.

He’s the longtime writer from Law and Order. In addition to that, the executive producer of the film, you may come to find also as a surprise, was Ron Howard. So Apollo 13, and then there were other famous people, actually a part of this movie. So as low budget. And, and funky and cut up as it was, it had a very large backing to it.

So this could have been the fast and the furious of the eighties. And maybe we were just too young to realize it when it came out. We just never heard about it. And it went to the archive and now was that? Oh, the moment I was. [00:46:00] Seeing the fashion, I really stopped paying attention to the movie. It is straight 80s down to the aquanet and the gel and the, you know, the multiple pink shirts and the whole nine yards.

Like, it’s like an episode of Miami Vice. The one woman with the really wide shouldered suit that when she turns around the club, there is no shirt. And it’s like taped on. I just, I, I was, yeah, that was it. That was during the obligatory band scene, which is very typical in the 80s movie. We started to crack up.

We’re like, Hey, it’s jam out time. Huey Lewis in the news is going to come on next. I mean, it’s like, Well, I mean, it had so many tropes in it, but to Brad’s point, the sister was Toretto’s sister. It was the same storyline we’ve come to know now, but we didn’t know about this little gem from 1987. I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing it, so I’m interested to see what the rest of the review has to say.

God, you know, I had a lot of fun playing spot the car in the background, so I’m going to start with that. So there’s a [00:47:00] cabrio. It’s all cabrio. There was a, there was a mark one Jetta. There was a 16 voucher Rocco. They use three times in the movie. It was bright red. I found a Audi GT coupe. There was all sorts of stuff in the background that it was just like, Oh, look at that.

Oh, look at that. I even sent some screenshots to Tanya, you know, about it and whatnot, posted one of them on, on Instagram, as a matter of fact. And so that was kind of fun to see all those cars or some, you know, piece of junk Renault in there, a bunch of other stuff. It was, it was fun to see the Porsches and it was fun to play, you know, I spy and see, you know, the older eighties cars and whatnot.

You know, you don’t see in modern day movies and that aspect was fun and I mean it. But there’s one other comment I want to make on the I Spy. The, by today’s standards, half a million dollar Ferrari 512 BB that showed up multiple times in the background of this movie was beyond anything I could comprehend because the first time you see it in the police impound garage underground, Randy Quaid like, Just walks by it nonchalantly.

I’m like, there’s a half a million dollar Ferrari sitting there [00:48:00] basically in hock. And I was like, this makes no sense. They use the car again in another scene while they’re looking across the street at a black slant nosed 930. And DB Sweeney turns to Charlie Sheen and he goes, Why don’t we just take the Ferrari and Charlie Sheen’s like, ah, that’s Italian trash, right?

And then he’s got his eyes on, eyes on this, this 930. And I’m like, I just didn’t understand. I wanted to know whose car that maybe that’s Ron Howard’s car or Dick Wolf’s car or something like it just didn’t make sense to have such an expensive vehicle in the scene. It just was out of place with the rest of the cars.

I had an issue with the inconsistencies started with the first driving sequence after he goes to rescue Charlie Sheen from the top of like, I don’t know, Mulholland Drive or something, right? Cause it takes place in California, like everything else. And it’s in the middle of the night and it’s a cabrio.

This was the first time I noticed that they switched cars midway through the scene. Being a Porsche guy, you kind of tell these things with the headlights on a 911. There’s three different styles of headlights. [00:49:00] There’s this like really small kind of six inch round with this big surround around it. And that’s a U S spec headlight.

The early cars had a chrome surround and then the European cars had nothing. It was a big glass lens that makes the bug eyes look really, really big. And so you notice that they, they use three different gray cabrios and they’re just from different eras for some reason, and they keep switching them up.

But that wasn’t the big problem. The big problem is they’re going down this road and Charlie Sheen is literally goading him much like some of the scenes with Toretto and Brian, where he’s like, go faster. You can go faster. Just push it. And they’re driving kind of crazy down this windy road. And then they pan to DB Sweeney’s feet and he goes into a corner and he pops the clutch and hits the brakes.

And I’m like, What is going on? You’re in a 9 11 and then the scene, they’re completely sideways. And I’m like, was this on purpose or this is ridiculous. Right. And it’s like, just some of the driving stuff was just, just nutty. And I’m like, I get it for a [00:50:00] fact, but it just, it didn’t look good. Is that my favorite being cell phone rings right after they steal the slant nose 9 11.

And Charlie Sheen goes to go pick it up, and you hear the audio as he’s kind of blip shifting and shifting gears, but you’re looking at the stick shift and it’s not moving. And I’m like, this is so messed up, right? It’s just so bad editing, bad chase scenes, just bad consistency with the cars. But we haven’t touched on We’re getting there.

The car chase scene. The one and only car chase scene in this movie. Unfortunately, I was hoping for more and there was only that one. And I know we all had special reactions to the realism of that car chase scene. Because unlike Gone in 60 Seconds, where the cars were actually doing the carnage, you know, we had the blue bus.

School bus just launched and catapulted through [00:51:00] the air. And then we had the Camaro that launched through the side of a Pepsi tractor trailer truck. And, and, and what, what came out of that truck, Jess? Uh, nothing. A conveniently empty. Pepsi tractor trailer. We believe that the budget wasn’t enough that they could put soda cans in there to just hit them and explode them.

I don’t know that the budget was very high on this film outside of the Porsche’s. But to Tanya’s point that there is one chase scene, it lasts maybe a total of seven or eight minutes of those eight minutes, four of them are spent. Watching Charlie Sheen and DB Sweeney have a dialogue while they’re hiding in a, basically in a warehouse.

And they’re talking about some girl and she’s so pretty. Meanwhile, the Camaro is like lurking, like Knight Rider, just kind of like looking for them. And it’s these two dudes, like one’s this like greasy, like Eastern block guy. And the other dude is like some random Guido from New York. And they’re like totally irrelevant to the story.

You never [00:52:00] really see them again. And they’re actually confused with one of the major bad cops And the chasing is horrendous. The Camaro is a dog and this nine 30, you can hear them like short shifting it. And just like, they’re doing like 30 miles an hour and they’re doing a one wheel burnouts with the Camaro.

And then the best part is when they go in to the warehouse, Camaro’s like shiny and new looking or whatever. And they’re just literally driving around there at five miles an hour. Looking for this Porsche, which is actually really easy to see because it’s silver and everything else is black. You know, just dark.

They drive right by him. You’re like, okay, this is weird. And then there’s this whole kerfuffle, and they pull out, and as soon as they pull out, which they go out the door they came in, the Camaro is completely bashed up in the front. Like, it’s already been in 12 accidents. You’re like, what the heck is going on here?

Then, they T bone a Lincoln, that basically destroy it. Bus goes into the air, and I mean, I had seen the scene on YouTube, cause Tanya sent it to me, which is what really piqued my interest about this movie. When [00:53:00] Jess saw the bus, go basically into orbit. She just busted out laughing. And then I was like, all right, we’re good.

We got another, you know, 35 minutes to go. We’re going to make it to the end here. What a disaster that was. I mean, they could have cut the chasing out and it made no difference. Well, the chasing killed me too. Cause I’m like, come on, really? This Camaro was up the tail. It was nine 30. Like it couldn’t shake him.

And I know Dan’s going to tell me, Well, it could have been a Z28, an iROC, and blah blah, and a 350, and 900 horsepower. Dude, it was an RS base model, two tone, T top turd. I mean, I can’t get enough T’s in there. This car was bottom of the barrel, off the used car lot. Like, there was nothing redeeming about this car.

There was no way in hell. It was catching this 9 11 in real life. From the era of 200 horsepower V8s. Yeah, yeah. You never heard the audio from the Camaro. You just heard the 9 11s. [00:54:00] And that’s one thing I will give them credit for. There are many movies that use the sound of a 9 11. And you guys have heard this on the, the name, that tune episode that we did.

It’s a very distinct sound. I hear it all the time in movies. And I just cringe when they show a Honda civic and it’s got a nine 11 sound or something. I’m just like, Oh God, this movie was legitimate sounds. When they fired up a nine 11 in the background, you heard it. It was the actual sound when they were using it in a scene.

It was the actual car. And you can tell that sound and it sounded good, but yeah, that was a disaster and we’re gonna post the link To the chase scene as part of the show notes because it’s available on youtube So you can check it out for yourself and have a good laugh It’s definitely worth it and obviously check out the film.

It’s still available on voodoo if you’re interested But any final comments? I chose to watch it because I apparently had nothing else to do in my life at that moment. You know, it’s kind of typical Zadie, 80s movie, um, so I wasn’t going into it expecting too much. It met those [00:55:00] expectations, so I wasn’t neither pleased nor overly displeased.

I will say, I got all the way to the end, and the end scene,

not to give spoilers away, because there’s people who haven’t seen it, and they might want to go watch this movie, but it kind of just ends, and I’m, and I sat there, and I’m laying on my couch, and I’m like, did this just end like this? And then it goes black, and the credits come up, and I literally sat up.

And said to no one, what a trash movie. It was, it was special. It, it at least had a plot, whether it was a good one or not. It had one, unlike the gone in 60 seconds, which the plot was just to have a 40 minute car chase scene, but at least there was a plot here. The acting was. It’s probably on par for the timeframe.

I mean, I wouldn’t say either of them are truly, you know, [00:56:00] Golden Globe Academy Award winning actors, clearly. I mean, you don’t see D. B. Sweeney doing too much after Cutting Edge and whatnot, and well, we all know Charlie Sheen, so. Well, I’ll just say, I didn’t have the displeasure of watching this, but if you want a movie with Charlie Sheen and a good car chase, go for it.

You need to watch the chase from 1994. That’s a like OJ Simpson style, slow highway chase. So since I haven’t seen the movie, but you guys have referred to it as possibly an older concept of Fast and Furious, it makes me wonder for the fact car culture wasn’t as big, but when Fast and Furious came out, the whole import tuner scene was starting to grow and becoming a big thing.

It makes you wonder if there would have been that car scene at that time. Would there have been more of it? Would it have grown? Would it have become a franchise much like Fast and the Furious has? Well, if you’d seen the last scene, no. Yeah, that’s true. I don’t want to spoil it for you, so you gotta watch it.

You can watch it for free on Mubu, and [00:57:00] you can let us know about that. But I will say, in closing, there is something special about 80s movie and TV. It’s something my dad used to call the obligatory toilet scene. And for whatever reason, there’s always like a toilet or bathroom scene, like in movies from the 80s.

And I don’t want to spoil it, but there is one in this movie and when I saw it, I busted up laughing I was just like well They need they need to shoot a scene somewhere where they can do their coke and not get caught They need to be able to clean up easy And that’s the only way they get through those movies All right, so up next is our final film, which is The Lost Bullet, another recommendation from Tanya.

I’m going to continue to use that word if she doesn’t like it. It is a newer film from 2020, available on Netflix, and the upside is you can watch it in the original French with subtitles, which we did, and I know Tanya did as well, but it is actually dubbed in English, so you can watch it in just without having to deal with the subtitles or learning French or anything like that.

I think the first [00:58:00] question about this movie, if you watch it, is, is it really a car movie? And I’d like to argue yes, and we’ll, I think we’ll get to that. For a second, I thought you were going to throw the recommendation blame on me, because I remember sending you a message about it. I recall your response being, well, I guess I have to now, because the reason I watched this movie was a friend of mine had watched it, and threw the question out there being like, hey, all my friends that weld, have you watched this movie?

So I was intrigued. I’m like, okay, well, let me have a look at this. Within the first, like, 30 seconds of the movie, you see some really horrible welds. And it’s like, Okay, and then you see what those welds on the car are supposed to hold up to later and you’re like, yeah, that wouldn’t happen. Although I am intrigued by the design of how he uses the stuff to hook vehicles and everything, but is it a car movie?

I would say yes, in a sense it does have like some chase scenes and things like that. The storyline is not so much car based in a sense. But it is for the fact that, like, the Citroen or whatever it was, I don’t even know. Renault. [00:59:00] Okay. Anyway. R21 Turbo! Yeah, so. 2 liter! 2 liter! Yes. So, obviously, it was a very key vehicle for the characters in the movie.

For me, not being a fan, I was like, okay, it’s just another square car. Right up your alley! Another square car! No, no, no. Square bodies and square cars are different. And that was why I sent it to you, because I know you’re into, like, European cars, so that’s why I asked you if you’d seen it. Because I was curious, I figured you’d hit me back, like, yeah, this is the significance of this car.

But, so, I’m sure there’s some history to that car, and it’s, it being as pristine in that movie, and why it was such a possession of the owner of it. But, as a car movie, I would say, yeah, but it also had a storyline that went away from car stuff. I’ll put my two cents in there. I felt it was a modern take on a Statham movie, with all French cast.

I really like the main actor. I thought he did a good job. I like the fight scenes I thought they were really raw Compared to some of the overly produced action movies we see these days. I like the way [01:00:00] it was filmed. I thought it had a good story. It kept me interested the entire time. You know, I didn’t start to snooze halfway through it.

It was, it was just good. It was inviting. I will add a piece of color for the anime fans out there. I thought Shiraz played by Ramzi Badia. I thought he would be a good casting choice for the Golgo 13 movie. So if you’ve ever seen that anime, Uh, GoGo13 is what they based the professional off of. So he’s an assassin, all this kind of thing.

He looks exactly like him. So I thought that was kind of cool. I was sad to, you know, see his character removed from the story, but it was important that, you know, to, to progress it. I, I saw it on Netflix. And the cover art, which I think they’ve changed recently, so when I saw it on Netflix, the cover art was the R21, with like this, uh, demolition rug end on it, in what seemed to be a chase scene of some sort, and I think I actually, like, Googled, and like, YouTubed And then I caught like a glimpse of the chase scene.

I was like, all right, I’m, uh, gonna watch [01:01:00] this, um, all the way through. Um, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to get because, okay, it’s a French movie, blah, blah, blah. But I thought it was a actually pretty decent action movie, which I think is car adjacent. Maybe it’s not in the same way as Fast and the Furious, but I feel like it has the potential.

To sort of generate sequels that they take it in that direction. Cause there were parts throughout the movie where it was very suggestive that there could be more to having the cars involvement in the storyline. There was a scene in the, in sort of the end of the first half of it. Where they kind of go into that little garage, and there’s just a line of, I don’t know, a dozen Renaults of, you know, every color of the rainbow sitting there, and you’re like, salivating.

Megan R. S. ‘s to be very, very particular about. I was super geeked about that scene. I was like, where are we going now? I will take the black one. And the red one, thank you very much. Exactly. I was like, ooh, this is going to get really [01:02:00] good. We’re going to have like this chase scene down the highways with all these cars zipping back and forth.

And they didn’t do anything with it. And it’s like, oh, okay. But it left, I feel like they, they, they used it in its potential for maybe a sequel. And there’s a Forbes article. that talks about this movie and kind of reviews it. And it gave it a fairly positive review, and at the end, uh, they were saying that the main, the main actor there, Alvin Lenoir, so according to Alvin Lenoir, Lost Bullet was written with sequels in mind.

So maybe A future sequel will have more cars in it. You, you were, you were reminding me of something. Cause there is one part of the movie that I didn’t understand. And maybe Tanya read more about it and she can fill me in. Do you guys remember the scene where he’s kind of in the dark and he asked to work longer in the police, uh, the motor pool there.

And he’s building a motor and you never see the car that he’s putting it in, but you can tell he’s building a race engine. Cause he’s got independent throttle bodies and a bunch of other stuff. And it’s up on the engine crane. Yeah. He kind of rolls it away and then [01:03:00] they pan away and they go somewhere else and you never see it again.

And I thought that he was building this R 21, but in reality that was, you know, Shiraz’s car or whatever. So I’m wondering if that’s gonna be a thread that they pull through into the next movie. Or we were just supposed to ignore that as just something that didn’t get put on the cutting room floor So with that engine when he’s asking to work longer that was so if I recall the timeline correctly That’s when he was still on kind of like the work release from the prison and they’re like, okay Yeah, we’ll buy you some more time to do this Then like they were saying like the whole romance aspect with him and the one character It’s out of the blue that I go for nine months So who knows what happened to that engine during that nine months?

So it may have wound up in one of those cars for all we know But It would definitely be interesting. That may have just been their filler, but it’s hard to tell. It possibly does lend itself. There’s different aspects, just like the scene where they go into the garage with the 10 or 12 Magallans that are sitting there.

It’s like, Ooh, [01:04:00] this is exciting, but we didn’t do anything with it. Is that also another thread that’s going to, you know, they’re setting the scene here. They set a scene in this first movie to develop later movies, maybe. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I would love to see that motor in their Ford Mondeo.

So we talked about movies. It feels like I thought it also gave me a little bit of handsome Rob from the Italian job. So if you remember that the original movie or the remake state them played handsome Rob, who is the mechanic that was souping up the mini Coopers. So it had also that a little bit of tribute to that in my mind with him working in the garage and all that kind of stuff, because that’s the whole premise, like the whole setup at the very start, which is why I was a little mad at it.

Was that like he’s some kind of genius? You know, he can make a, a Renault Clio that can go through four concrete walls. Oh my God. You know, like, you know, he’s an absolute genius fabricator. And so, yeah, like they show that whole room, you’re like, Oh my God, how [01:05:00] is he going to trick these? Oh. And then like, Okay.

But of course the hooks on the front of the two liter. I’m just going to keep calling it the two liter. That was amazing. And when it like yanked, the back axle, I was like, I was just like, Oh my God, I love this. But like, yeah, there’s a lot of potential for them to like, showcase the talents of that. Um, and they, They removed all the other people in his storyline.

So it’s pretty clear to ask whoever the hell they want. My opinion, we left the door open with, with how it ended is, you know, the storyline he he’s, he’s got his sordid past and he ends up, you know, busting through this jewelry store for walls of concrete. He overshot, he didn’t even spring his wrist. He was perfect.

I mean, he wasn’t a harness. Um, he mistricked out Cleo and then he, the harness gets stuck so he can’t get out of the car and he gets arrested and he goes to jail. But [01:06:00] then the police recognize this detective on this drug task force recognizes the potential in this guy. In these cars. And they’re in this task force that are these drug sellers are constantly getting away and really fast BMWs and other cars.

And so they’re always having to do chases. And so they want him to utilize his skills in beefing up their cars to be able to chase the go fast.

They called them the go fast, but that was similar to the fast and the furious at that point. I was going to say, I mean, at that point, aren’t you, isn’t that like saying, Hey, you were really good at dealing drugs on the street. Why don’t you be a pharmacist? Well, they pulled him in while he was still basically incarcerated and they were having him do side work.

And then they pulled him out. Um, basically they, they said, if you come work for us and you’re our personal mechanic, essentially, we’re kind of going to levy the rest of your charges here and reduce your, your sentence. And then the whole thing happens, and then he’s accused [01:07:00] of, of murder, basically, and then the rest of the movie, and he didn’t do it, and the rest of the movie is him trying to prove his innocence.

Marvelous things with the, the two liter ensue towards the end of the movie, and there’s, there’s a nice chase scene at the end with it, et cetera, et cetera. But basically that leaves you all the way to the end, it all gets resolved and you’re like, well I can see this, the sequel opening up, okay, he’s proven himself, he’s the fabricator, the driver, etc.

This task force expands, they get new people on it, they’ve got him, they’re running around doing Fast and the Furious stuff, but with cars, I mean, there’s potential here, let’s, hopefully they do something with it. It’ll be season two of The Viper. So I felt it had the same grit as the Transporter. Like, to me, it felt more like that than it did the Fast and the Furious.

And I’m okay with that, because in the same way that the Transporter was car adjacent, so was this movie. So, the car, you know, that seventh series that Statham drove in the first one, it wasn’t the star, but it got your attention. And so did that Renault [01:08:00] 21, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. So, I’ll definitely agree with you with it having more Transporter vibe than Fast and Furious vibe.

Now On the storyline though, one thing that I found disappointing is the go fast. You never really see any chases going after them. You hear them talk about them, but you never see them. You know, it’s like they’re this huge issue, but you would think there would have been more chase scenes involving that.

You know, even if they are being outran, it would have been cool to have shown where they’re being outran some. So there was the one scene where he’s chasing the five series BMW. And that they were part of the go fast. That was the only time there was kind of a real chase scene with them. But the scene that they did with the, with the Renault 21, with the hooks on the front of it, those were dirty cops.

And so you started to, as you went through the movie, you started to realize that the cops are part of the go fast syndicate as well. So I think we got to go fast chase scenes out of that at the end of the day. Well, it could have been budget stuff [01:09:00] too, because like when I, when I watched it, There’s a lot going on in the storyline.

And, and it’s, it’s hard to follow a little bit at first. And then, a couple of pieces, when a couple of the cops turn out to be dirty, then a lot of the pieces fall into place and a lot of stuff makes sense. Like I said, my, my initial purpose for watching it was just for the first 30 seconds. And then somehow I watched it for the rest of it.

And it was all over the really lousy welds in the first 30 seconds of the movie. But as I watched it, I really was liking the idea of the stuff he was welding and building and it gave me ideas. I wouldn’t mind building something like that. I mean, let’s jump back to that Clio for a second. I mean, it was the ugliest generation of the Clio hands down.

I mean, it looks like just, I don’t know, it’s awful, but he sticks a V10 Lamborghini engine mid ship. Right. And you’re like, this is ridiculous. Like I was like, man, you’re going to lose me about five minutes into this movie if it’s going to be like this. And when he blows through the wall, the walls, plural, and just starts cracking up.[01:10:00]

I’m like, Oh man. Okay. Where are we going to go from here? I’m giving you one last shot. And the car stalls, he gets locked up. I was like, Oh, thank God we didn’t go on some 20 minute ridiculous, you know, blowing flames and lights under the car chasing. So I was like, this is a little bit more realistic. It’s like completely absurd.

But then that was like some levity right up front to get me engaged. You know, it finally tipped the, tipped me over and then I was like, all right, where are we, where are we going from here? And it got super interesting. So i’m glad to see that even the later stuff when he modified the r21 Wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility You could tell there was definitely weight on the front end of that car It was picking the picking the rear end up and stuff like that and none of the driving was anything absolutely ridiculous like, you know, somebody’s jumping jersey walls and You know, flying over cars and buses are going into orbit and stuff like that.

It was, it was pretty low key, but that’s what I think kept it interesting and kept it exciting. I’ll say it was closer to realistic. Although I [01:11:00] think the amount of steel on the front of that car, the front suspension would not have held it in reality. So I’m going to say those old mattress springs, they used to suspension back then.

That was not, not, not high performance stuff. It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t look like, uh, you know, the guys that do the stunt stuff on street bikes, have the metal plates on the bottom of their shoes and kick off all the sparks flying up when they’re dragging their feet. That’s what the front end of that car would have looked like going down the road with the amount of weight from all that steel on it, in my opinion.

So, you know, since we’ve brought it up, let’s talk about this car. Like, nobody, you just, like you said, you look at it, you’re like, Eh, it’s a box, you know, with, it looks like a box from the 80s, like all the rest of them, you know. It happens to have wraparound headlights, so it might be from the late 80s. And you look at it, it’s nothing special.

And when Tanya sent me the picture, I said, Rawr! That’s a Citroen. And she’s like, no, look closer. And I had to like kind of zoom in. And then I saw the Renault Diamond on the hood. At first glance, you know, the Citroen BX is a similar looking car. And that’s what I thought it was. And most people that aren’t into French cars aren’t going to know that either.

But [01:12:00] what they are going to know is, And he 30 M three, they’re going to know the Ford Sierra Cosworth. They’re going to know the Mercedes one 90 E the alpha one 55 and cars like that. They’re all of the same, same generation. And the Renault R 21 was France’s answer to especially the Ford Sierra Cosworth.

And so for the French people, it’s a sports saloon, right? It’s a sports saloon. It’s a sports car that unfortunately was overshadowed by the R5, and by the Clio, and some of the other, you know, hot hatches of the same era. But, you’d probably be surprised to know that that little two liter Puts out 175 horsepower.

So for that time period, for a car that was built 1986 and only ran to 1994, that’s pretty good power for back in those days, especially in a front wheel drive. You know, looks can be deceiving. I was kind of hoping it was a rear wheel drive. Cause that would have made it a little bit more special, especially trying to compete with the E30 M3 and a lot of those other cars.

Apparently it was built all over the world in [01:13:00] Argentina. It was built in the United States and Canada and Turkey and down in Columbia as well. And I mentioned the United States and Canada. And would anybody like to venture a guess what the Renault 21 was sold as in the United States? I’m intrigued. It’s on Cintra?

No, not today. Yeah, yeah, it would be today. I was trying to find the photo of it again. So I could look at it. It’s a Panaz. Oh, no, I’m staring at it. Like it, it’s familiar, but I’m not, I’m not seeing it. Okay, so, Would have been probably a Chrysler, like, uh, Very good. your cloud car. Very good. Very close to the money there, Chrissy.

Mid year production, 1989, it was sold in the United States as the Eagle Medallion. So they changed the front clip and the badge, you know, headlights were basically the same and all that, and sold it, sold the Renault 21 here with a lesser motor, non turbo, eight valve, [01:14:00] in the United States for like one year.

And that was it. So. If you are really in love with that car and can find one in your local scrapyard, you too can, can build the car from the movie. But with that being said, you’re telling me it’s some weird twisted cousin to the eagle talent. Yes, just for you. Absolutely. You know, nothing to write home about from our perspective, especially it’s Fort saloons of the day, but you know, to the French people, it was their version of the Sierra Cosworth.

Right. And it was up there. It was the underdog. And there’s tons of articles about it. I think Jalopnik did one and a bunch of others about this unsung hero of, you know, French automobiles, et cetera. But I think it was cool to see something different featured in a film. It wasn’t the same Porsche, Ferrari, Mitsubishi, BMW that, you know, you always see in every action movie.

It was. It’s a French car for a change, multiple French cars in the movie. One thing you were saying how this car in particular wasn’t some flashy, you know, Porsche, Ferrari, or anything like that. I think that helped the [01:15:00] storyline because it made you pay more attention to the storyline because for me, the car didn’t, it was no bells and whistles for me.

So the car was like, okay, it’s just a car that something special is about it. But it made me pay more attention to the storyline instead of paying attention to the car. I think Jess brought up something really important as we watched the film, which was there were a ton of station wagons. They were all over the place.

The, uh, the female detective, she was, the car chasing at the end, she was in a BMW wagon, right? Like half the, the, the vehicles for the police staff were wagons. I was like, what? So Detective Moss drove an E46 station wagon, and not the wimpy one that we got for like a couple of years here in the U. S. It was actually a legit E46 station wagon.

It’s very cool, all black. And then Julia, Ends up driving it in one of the last sequences. And I also a quote from Jessica, uh, we got, what, halfway through the movie and you were like, is she ever going to talk other than the word? No, because she only said no, like during the first half of the movie. And that was it.

Like, I didn’t know what was going [01:16:00] on. And I think the love interests between our main character, Lino and Julia was kind of interesting. They, they unpack that in a weird way. I will just say it is unclear. For too long that nine months have passed, they’re just sort of like fast forward. There’s no little like nine months later and like a full like 15 minutes.

It’s like, so in these past nine months, I was like, thank you. Thank you. Exposition. Otherwise I have no idea what’s happening because they literally let him see the picture of his like new team. And then it’s nine months later and they’re having like a lover’s quarrel. And they’re not talking to each other.

We have nothing to fill that in. Now, I will say Jess also asked me at one point, we’re talking about the claw, she was like, is, is that legit? And I said, well, technically the other car was a Ford Mondeo, it’s front wheel drive. Yes. If the claws are long enough and you grab the rear axle, you Basically could do that.

I thought it was hilarious when they pushed it into the police barricade. That was really cool. I [01:17:00] mean, again, it was more authentic than a lot of other chase scenes and, and, and things like that, where there wasn’t the big, massive, big budget explosions. I thought the fact that it was more low key gave it just more grit and more realism and more credibility as a movie.

I enjoyed that. And I thought it, I thought it was really fun. So I like the cast. I thought they worked well together. I mean, they’re no name to me, but in the same way I enjoyed Money Heist, I kind of very quickly became comfortable with them. I enjoyed them. I want to see more of the cast, even Moss, who was kind of a, like, she was really hard nosed.

I want to see more of all these characters working together. I was really disappointed to see Shiraz, uh, die. I mean, that’s a spoiler there, but it kind of wraps us into the end of this talk track about whether or not it’s a car movie. And for me, I really thought it was a car movie because the end scene when Lino builds basically that funeral pyre for Shiraz with the car covered with the flowers, you know, [01:18:00] post the burn and all that ridiculousness that happened, it was really touching.

And the way they finished it, where they zoomed in, On the picture of Shiras in the car, kind of doing like the what’s up peace sign, you know, it was, it was kind of touching for me. I mean, it didn’t bring a tear to my eye, but it was like, as a car guy, I was like, I got you. I was like, I get this. Like there, he had that love affair with the car and there was a slight tie in because it was a staple in the French police force.

And Lino made a comment about how his dad had one. So that was the first insight to his backstory and to how his dad was a police officer. But they never touched it again. So for me, it kind of brought it all together. And I don’t know, I thought it was just really sweet and touching and it turned it into a car movie.

It definitely showed his appreciation for the car, especially when the main character was trying to see if he could drive it. And the guy’s like, no, you’re not driving. I truly understand that. My sister to this day is mad the fact I won’t let her drive a couple of my vehicles. I’m like, sorry, you’re [01:19:00] not driving.

So, but that’s just how I am. Certain vehicles people don’t drive are the ones I don’t want. I can appreciate that. I was just going to say that I really enjoyed the movie. I thought just from a, as a whole, I just thought it was a good movie. It had a good story. The only thing that I didn’t like about it or that was a little too Hollywood was beating up like 20 police officers and the police station to try and get out.

I mean, that was a little. I don’t even know if Jason Statham could have done that, but other than that, I thought it was a very good movie. I would watch it again. It was very entertaining. I’m looking forward to seeing more. I think you all mentioned earlier that this is, there are plans to bring it back, bring the group back, or do another sequel or something.

I would definitely watch that. And I like the fact, as you all were saying earlier, that they’ve got all these, all these non flashy cars. Like these are enthusiast cars, like people, it’s like us in the Mark Fours, like people get enthusiastic about the Renault Clios and the Megans [01:20:00] and he loved his little two liter turbo.

You know, you can’t look, you can’t touch the hood, anything under the hood of my two liter turbo. You better leave it alone. That’s how I feel about my GTI. That’s how you feel about your TT. I know we all feel that way about our little crap boxes. You know, other people on the outside don’t get it, but it’s not for them to get, it’s for us to get it.

So I kind, I connected with them because of their love for their cars and the love that I, and I assume that we all have, you know, for our own vehicles. I thought it was a good movie, though. I, I enjoyed it. So all in all, my initial purpose to watch it was for the first 30 seconds to critique the lousy wading.

I was impressed by it. It was a decent movie. I was intrigued the whole way through. It kept me interested, and it’s definitely something I’d potentially watch again. Like I mentioned, the cover art is what initially drew me in, and then watching the preview further drew me in. And I thought it, I wasn’t, didn’t know what I was going to expect, and I listened to it in the need of the tongue.

Um, the [01:21:00] movie was great. Was made in and I thought it was going to be something that was just kind of, you know, even though I got to read the subtitles, I was like, I’ll just have it in the background and jump in and out of it. And I found myself completely like, drawn into it and just watching it the whole way through it being way more entertaining than I thought it was going to be.

And I actually, Brad, I like the, the, the action scene, the police fight in the police station of him trying to get out because it. Cause he’s actually, he’s actually a stunt man. So he’s done stunts in some other, um, I’d have to look it back up, but there’s actually some movies that we would all recognize that he’s done stunt man work in.

So like, he’s really fighting in, in those scenes. Like they’re not cutting and doing CGI and all this other stuff. So like, it felt, it felt real. It felt more interesting. I understand your point that it was a good scene, like movie wise. I just, as real to me as the rest of the movie felt. I just, I find it hard to believe that even if he is a stuntman, unless [01:22:00] he’s special forces or or something, he’s not going to get away from 20 armed police officers inside the police precinct.

like that. Granted, it wasn’t easy. He had to sneak out the back door after almost getting caught, but still it felt very Chuck Norris to me. Dude, they’re, they’re French police officers. All right. I’m just going to lay it out there. I will, I will give you that. I’m surprised they didn’t run the other way.

They’re going to yell, let’s stop. Let’s stop. No, and I have a great appreciation for all of my, you know, European neighbors, you know, being Italian, whatever. It’s fine. But you know, all jokes aside, Jess, take us home. Me? I mean, I just, I agree with Tanya. You know, I thought, having watched the previous two movies, I really did think it was going to be a car movie.

So imagine my delight when they start the fight scene and I was like, Oh, snap. Okay. Totally different kind of movie. Here for it. Absolutely here for it. So, and much like [01:23:00] everyone else has said, I would happily watch that movie again. I really liked that actor. It turns out he’s actually super famous. He’s even been nominated for the French version of an Oscar.

So he’s pretty legit, but I was a big fan and the car scenes that were in that were what I was hoping the prior two movies completely failed to So I will add I know you guys said you watched it with English subtitles. I didn’t realize that it was originally in French and had subtitles, because I must have got the version of it where the audio overrun it.

So, it was actually in English, but I could tell, like, I thought the audio track was off a little bit, so that makes sense if it was originally in French. as to why some of their mouth moving didn’t line up with the words being said. I thought it was just like, maybe my stream service wasn’t that good at that time.

But, you know, it is available to listen to in English if people don’t want to read. Yeah, that’s how I watched it. It was dubbed. The English, it defaults to the English or the audio. So I’ll say of all the four movies we talked about tonight, the one that we can [01:24:00] solidly recommend a consensus is the one we least expected to be good, which is a French film about an ex con driving a Renault.

And on that bombshell, I think it’s time to end. Thanks everybody for being on. We’ll do another one of these soon, promising to bring you an episode where we don’t just talk about cars. Talk about all sorts of things. So stay tuned for the next one. Thanks.

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