Speed Racer (2008)

Directors:

Andy Wachowski
Larry Wachowski

Writers (WGA):

Andy Wachowski (written by) &
Larry Wachowski (written by) ...

Release Date:

9 May 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Family | Sport

Tagline:

Go

Plot:

The story begins with Speed Racer who is a young man with natural racing instincts whose goal is to win The Crucible...

Plot Keywords:

Pants Fall Down | Private Jet | Mother Son Relationship | Kicked In The Crotch | Helicopter

Awards:

5 nominations

US Showtimes:

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Cast

Emile Hirsch	...	Speed Racer
Nicholas Elia	...	Young Speed
Christina Ricci	...	Trixie
John Goodman	...	Pops Racer
Melissa Holroyd	...	Speed's Teacher
Susan Sarandon	...	Mom Racer
Matthew Fox	...	Racer X
Ariel Winter	...	Young Trixie
Scott Porter	...	Rex Racer
Benno Fürmann	...	Inspector Detector
Gian Ganziano	...	Everyman Announcer
Peter Fernandez	...	Local Announcer
Harvey Friedman	...	Harold Ledermann Announcer
Richard Roundtree	...	Ben Burns
Sadao Ueda	...	Japanese Announcer

Also Known As:

Race Chasers (USA) (fake working title)
Speed Racer: The IMAX Experience (USA) (IMAX version)

MPAA:

Rated PG for sequences of action, some violence and language.

Runtime:

135 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | DTS | SDDS

Certification:

Finland:K-11 | Singapore:PG | Hong Kong:IIA | UK:PG | Philippines:PG-13 (MTRCB) | Germany:12 | Norway:11 | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | South Korea:All (DVD rating) | Brazil:10 | Venezuela:PG-13 | Netherlands:6 | Argentina:13 | Malaysia:U | Sweden:7 | Taiwan:GP (original rating) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | South Korea:12 | Portugal:M/6 | Ireland:PG | USA:PG (certificate #44193)

Filming Locations:

Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

The view inside Speed's locker at the start of the film shows his watch to be a Heuer Monaco Sportiva, the same watch worn by Steve McQueen in the classic racing film Le Mans (1971).

Goofs:

When first visiting the Racer family, Royalton says one line in German - "Pfannkuchen sind Liebchen" - and translates it to "pancakes are love." "Liebchen" is a very old fashioned German word for lover, the correct German sentence would have been "Pfannkuchen sind Liebe."

Quotes:

[first lines]
Race Announcer: All drivers to your cars, please. All drivers to your cars.

Movie Connections:

References Little Caesar (1931)

Soundtrack:

Free Bird

The Hungry Desire of Eye

I saw this the same night as the latest film by my favorite filmmaker and I must admit that this held its own.

Sure, the story is silly and there are the requisite two lessons for children. All the shots with the parents could have been replaced with a dialog card so far as I care. But this is highly cinematic in a fine-grained sense.

Coursegrained long form would be the cinematic values of that Peter Greenaway film, where the narrative has substance and is cast cinematically. The contrast is shocking, with this Wachowski business seeming to be mere busy style.

But look again. There's real value in how the story is told even though the story is as close to vacuous white noise as possible. In fact, there's a statement there that matters. This movie is about movie-making. The watchers of the "race" are watchers of the movie. Its a simple fold.

I consider this the best of the brothers' films because their sometimes intriguing plots distract from their deeper intent. That intent is to visually explore what it means to watch. Sure, those plots are about watching as well. But people watch "The Matrix" and build religions around the story mechanics as if they matter. Previously, "Bound" was my favorite Wachowski film because it suppressed the noise of the story so as to equal the expression of that story in terms of the eye, the desire of eye.

These folks are to Welles as Coltrane is to Getz. They run riffs whose patterns are derived from the languid, meaningfilled studies of what went before, but which are presented so quickly you cannot possibly comprehend the fullness with which they were originally loaded.

That overloading of serious visual grammar has an immediate effect: that we are really there instead of digesting something filtered to be simple enough for us to understand. But there's a deeper effect: there is so much motion here, so many paths we can choose from to decide what we see, that there's a sort of tease between the film and our mind about what options they will present — and what tricks they will use to suggest paths to comprehension. And on our part to discard, to race ahead of the track suggested, to speed ahead and get to the end before even the movie.

I consider this serious work, and an advance in film grammar that possibly will be profound.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.