TRA-LA-LA-LA-LA LA-VOLTA: SPEED KILLS (2018) *

Ben Aronoff leaves his lucrative New Jersey construction business under mysterious circumstances to go and sell speedboats in Miami.  He quickly falls in love with the sport and becomes a champion speedboat racer almost overnight.  Before long, his former employer, gangster Meyer Lansky (James Remar) comes calling.  He wants Ben to use his boats to run drugs, and because they are friends, he doesn’t mind so much when Ben pushes back.  Things change rapidly once Lansky dies and his hotheaded nephew (Kellan Lutz), who hates Ben with a passion, takes over.

Like Travolta’s Gotti, this is another crummy gangster picture with insipid aspirations of being a Martin Scorsese movie.  Like Scorsese’s Mob films, there are freeze frames of important Mob figures (Travolta lets you know who they are via voiceover), montages set to songs by Italian crooners, and of course, gangland violence.  It’s unfair to keep comparing Speed Kills to Scorsese’s body of work because it can’t compete.  Heck, even compared to Gotti, it’s pretty much a mess.

Like Gotti, both films span decades.  Whereas that flick at least had an array of wigs, period costumes, and old age make-up to show the march of time, here, Travolta always looks like his usual self, albeit at times with a slightly different haircut.  Even though Speed Kills takes place from 1962 to 1987, it always looks like it’s set in present day!  (The only period detail seems to be a pay phone that’s featured in the early going.)

Although the plot may be a bit more coherent than Gotti, the film as a whole is even worse, if you can believe it.  Like Gotti, it’s incompetent on many levels (don’t get me started on the horrible CGI during the hurricane sequence), but it lacks the jaw-dropping badness that may give that flick a shelf life as a camp classic for future generations.  This one is just plain bad.  

Travolta does what he can, but this one is pretty much DOA from the start.  The supporting cast are equally at odds with the weak material.  Katheryn Winnick and Jennifer Esposito are wasted as the women in Travolta’s life and Tom Sizemore is underutilized as a hitman.  It was nice seeing Michael Weston, Travolta’s co-star from Lucky Numbers popping up in a sizable role.  The most bizarre bit though came from Matthew Modine in an extended cameo as George H.W. Bush!  

Director John Lussenhop of Texas Chainsaw 3-D fame had his name removed from the final product.  I can’t say I blame him.  He still retains a screenwriting credit though. 

I hope he was responsible for the only good line of dialogue, which comes when Travolta begins his meteoric ascension in the racing business and tells Esposito, “You’re swinging with Tarzan now.  Hang on.”