I finally found a movie I wanted to review that involved cars instead of motorcycles, but it had all the momentum of a flat tire. Red Dirt Rising is a 2010 film that felt like a straight-to-TV movie from the 1980’s. They clearly had a budget for cars and wardrobe, with the 1930’s-1940’s era vibe being pushed very well through the imagery. That’s about all I can say about this film that is positive…
The idea for the film was to highlight the early days of NASCAR, when bootleggers were getting together to race their cars and prove who has the fastest moonshine runner. However, the characters are all 1-dimensional and use a pretty generic southern accent, and there never seems to be any real danger, and very little conflict. It’s basically three vaguely teenage-ish boys who like to drive fast, so they do.
There’s some vague references to moonshine and a sheriff who sure seems more friendly than any kind of antagonist. Not much danger there. The boys’ fathers seem like angry and abusive men, but to stop the boys from racing around country roads for fun, one of the dads decides to plow a section of field into a dirt oval so they can race in a safe environment. Not exactly an overbearing father…
Seemingly overnight there are fences and grandstands and people are showing up from different counties to race of spectate. Then there is an afterthought of a scene where everyone is racing, then there are some sparks in one of the driver’s cockpits. Some poorly done CGI flames come out the windows and very generic slow motion shots of people screaming and holding each other back from the flames follow.
This is about where I was done with the film, but when the sheriff comes out and there are glances thrown around like one of the other drivers was to blame — but everyone decides to say it was an accident — I really lost it. There was no reference to any kind of collision, sabotage, or anything incriminating. Suddenly I realize I’m more than halfway through the film and the first thing of interest to happen wasn’t even shot properly to create any tension.
So here I am, past the halfway point of the film, and this was just barely the first hint that stock car racing was going to turn into something. That’s a long time to wait for the plot to develop, especially for a movie that runs for only 93-minutes. But what was I holding out for? There was no stunt work, flat characters, uninspiring acting, and nearly no conflict.
The film felt like the high school drama club was given a few hundred thousand dollars to make a film, and this was the result. I couldn’t even finish it. The lack of characters with depth could not be overcome with good acting, and there really wasn’t much dialogue that allowed performers to bring life to their characters anyway. Low budget movies from the 1960’s at least have the campy feel of their low budgets, and any stunts still had to be done practically back then.
Here is the scene in question. Tell me if you see any hint of foul play:
That means if you want to torch a car, you have to torch it. CGI flames with no smoke and not even some scorched paint isn’t possible. Even a crappy explosion has more on-screen “oomph” than a CGI one. You also can’t forget that some of the classic movies like White Lightning and Stroker Ace had big talent, real stunts and real chase scenes, not just vintage cars bouncing down a dirt track with the frame rate sped up.
The teen-scare stuff birthed into biker epics and big-time series like Smokey and the Bandit, The Dukes of Hazard, and Cannonball Run (1, 2 & 3). The cheap made-for-TV-movies were excused because they came on broadcast television, i.e. free, and were a fine way to wind down a Sunday evening before starting back at work or school on Monday (Steven Spielberg’s first feature film was “Duel,” a low budget straight-to-TV flick).
I’ll have to dive back into my backlog of teen-scare movies, hot-rod operas, and low budget moonshiner or trucker movies. There’s plenty of gems in that world and even the stinkers at least have the benefit of aging decades. That makes the setting and the cars and the costumes more interesting, but I doubt Red Dirt Rising will come off that way fifty years from now.
The movie is available for free streaming on Amazon Prime as of this writing, and is also on YouTube for free with ads:
Johnny Killmore 