There's nowhere else to put this so I figured here was ok?

I recently bought Starflight One and Quick on DVD and Blu Ray respectively. I watched them both now and Quick was an interesting one. I figured to post my review here (you can click the link in my signature for other reviews if you're a sucker for punishment). It's a film worth a watch.



Quick (2011)

Quick (aka Adrenaline Rush), is a bit of an oddball for me to give a score out of five to. From one side, it's a reasonably interesting film with some half decent stunts and set pieces. On the other side though the film suffers from a middling plot, wonky acting and some horrendous (and very obvious) use of green screen. At 83 minutes it's also makes for a quick (badum tish!) viewing.

But none of the negative stuff really seems to matter that much, but why?

The two leads have a decent on-screen chemistry and when the plot and script suffer, this pair save it from certain death with some great fast chatter fired back and forth, or some great comedy pieces. The shower dream scene in particular I found very good.

It's just that the film seems to suffer from a case of 'too many cooks' in that it isn't really sure what it wants to be. A blatant Speed rip-off? A homage to The Transporter trilogy, the French Taxi films or just a sub-par action rom-com?

Couple the mixed messages the film sends out with some truly atrocious use of green screen and CGI and a large dose of over enthusiastic editing and it just brings down what would have otherwise been an above average action film.

I was initially going to award Quick a lowly two star rating. However, a couple of factors, in my opinion, bring it up to a three star rating.

So what's so special about a mediocre film that doesn't really know what it wants to be and isn't really that well made?

For starters, even though it is not a great film, there's a certain something about it that does manage to keep you engrossed to the very end, even though you know what you are watching isn't the greatest film you've ever seen. Perhaps it's the occasional comedic moments? The train finale perhaps? I'm not really sure to be honest, perhaps it's a mix of all of this. Regardless, it does have a certain charm and didn't result in me turning off the Blu Ray player.

If you make it to the end credits, stick around. A series of behind the scenes clips play out while the credits roll, similar in style to those found at the end of many a Jackie Chan film in the early days of his career. You won't find bloopers at the end of Quick, but instead you'll see the numerous injuries from stunts that went wrong during filming, some of them rather serious and requiring many a hospital visit.

Taking this in to account, you can clearly see the absolute hell the cast and stunt crew went through to get this film wrapped. I think that alone warrants an extra star, but let's be absolutely real here, Quick isn't a great film, no matter how much I want to rate it more than three stars out of five.

One thing I should note is that the German Blu Ray disc is a very slap dash effort. The whole disc reeks of minimal effort and a "that'll do" attitude. For the main feature you get a decent picture and a quality DTS-HD 2.0 audio track. The English subtitles however are horrendous. Riddled with formatting and timing errors, worst of all some scenes are missing dialogue entirely! Thankfully, missing dialogue doesn't occur too often, but still, that is absolutely criminal proofing.

The disc also has a behind the scenes documentary which looks great. However it is in Korean and there are no subtitle tracks for it at all, in English or German! Who the heck approved that? What is the point?

In essence, this is a ho-hum film presented on a ho-hum disc with all the quality control of British Leyland. Yet it does have a certain charm, thus my decision to award Quick a bang average 3 out of 5.

The stupid thing is, I'd happily watch this film again. Next time in 3D, which is also included on the disc.

I do like the cut of your jib teddanson.

Cheers

In fairness the Austin Allegro is one of the greatest cars ever made.

The Austin All-agro, with the famous (or infamous) Quartic square steering wheel - a legend for all the wrong reasons.

I dream of one day winning the lottery and buying an Allegro. Restore 90% of it to showroom condition. Preferably a baby poo colour. Or a really deep turd brown colour with a red velour interior (seats, dash, steering wheel, the lot).

Then under the hood drop in a Sierra Cosworth engine or a top fuel dragster engine. Literally spending hundreds of thousands on it. No expense spared tuning, suspension, ECU, everything.

Just to see what would happen.

EDIT: Someone seems to have had a go, but not really the same sort of thing I'd be after. I'd want my Allegro fully stock in almost every way and looking like it literally rolled off an enthusiastic Brummie carsalesman's forecourt in 1981!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zma8k06dqOo

The Allegro estate on the video, wot a laff!

If you ever get round to doing the Allegro thing please update, you could go down the Vanden Plas route - great colour options on some of them including the various turd colours.

Cheers

It'll never happen but maybe one day who knows?

Imagine a stock Vanden Plas with a Gumpert Apollo engine dropped in it.

I remember someone at school many years ago who's parents had an Allegro in this wonderful yellowy/tangerine Angel Delight colour. The entire interior was a sort of liquid diarrhea lentil brown (not the lovely turd mahogany or the dense cowpat brown they also offered).

What a shame you don't get cars in such turgid colour schemes any more.

So it would seem that someone else has the same Allegro dreams as me...and they are actually going through with it!

Here is the makings of a V6 supercharged Austin Allegro 'sleeper'!