John
Travolta stars as an ex-race car driver who now owns a failing racing
team. When his son (Toby Sebastian) leaves
the team to join his rival (Michael Madsen), it causes an irreparable rift
between them. With his son gone, Travolta
comes out of retirement and even manages to beat his kid in a few races. During a heated race, Sebastian gets into a
big wreck, barely making it out of the car alive. After the accident, father and son are drawn
closer together and they team up to take Madsen down on the track.
Trading
Paint seems readymade to play on CMT as it’s a southern-fried racing drama with
a country singer as a co-star. (In this
case, Shania Twain as Travolta’s girlfriend.) It’s a low stakes movie (with a low budget to
match) that would work best as background noise while clipping coupons or
something. The big problem is there isn’t
any fire in the racing scenes as it seems like they’re all driving pretty slowly.
Without the risk of danger, the racing sequences
lack sizzle.
The
fun of seeing both Vega Brothers, John Travolta and Michael Madsen finally
sharing the screen together quickly wears off. Madsen is ideally cast as the oily bad guy,
but there just aren’t any sparks between he and Travolta. Although Travolta doesn’t phone it in or anything,
this is definitely one of his weakest performances in some time.
While
Trading Paint is slightly more competent than late-era Travolta films like Gotti
and Speed Kills, it’s missing the X-factor Z-grade anti-craftsmanship that
might give them a shelf life as bad movie cult classics in the years to come. This one is just dramatically inert,
forgettable, and frankly, boring. Watching
Trading Paint is more like watching paint dry. There’s no excitement during the racing scenes,
and no fireworks during the dramatic sequences. As far as racing movies go, Days of Thunder is
still number one. This is more like an Afternoon
of Light Drizzle.
AKA: Burning Rubber.
No comments:
Post a Comment