Kill Speed   Starring: Greg Grunberg, Bill Goldberg, Robert Patrick , Nick Carter and Tom Arnold Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment RRP: £12.99 KAL8082 Certificate: 18 Available 31 January 2011

Four young friends fund their high lifestyle by running drugs across the Mexican border in fast customised planes. Their life without consequences soon comes to an end when their operation brings them to the attention of the FBI. The resulting arrest sees one of them killed and their leader having to make a deal for one last flight, which might end in his death...

Kill Speed (2010 - 1 hr, 51 min, 36 sec) is a high octane action thriller written and directed by Kim Bass.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this film, reading the PR blurb the movie stars an ex wrestler, who I had never heard of, a guy from the Backstreet Boys, no, still not heard of Nick Carter, but then I’m not fourteen, Tom Arnold (well, for ten minutes anyway) and Greg Grunberg. I’m thinking that this is certainly going to be a straight to DVD piece of old cack. But no, in a strange kind of juvenile way the film was pretty good.

The story is straight forward. Our young, amoral, desperados make cash by flying drugs across the border, so the FBI place a female agent in their midst to break the gang. Although she succeeds in her mission another agent has been caught by the Mexican Mafia and the boys have one choice, rescue the agent or go to jail.

The centre piece of the film is not the plot, but rather the flying sequences, of which there are many, which are high octane choreographed to perfection. Even more impressive is the very limited use of CGI, which means what you see is really what you get.

The acting is, with one exception, realistic. The one exception is Nick Carter, who is a white boy who speaks like an urban gangster. The trouble is that he is not really good at this and on more than one occasion he sounds more camp than gang. The rest of the cast put in some solid acting. My favourite turn is given by the actor playing the Air Guard One navigator, who sits behind the pilot eating burgers and passing acerbic comments on the plane chases.

This is not a deep movie, there is no examination of the morals of smuggling meth, and the surviving members of the team are all forgiven at the close of the film as if the damage that they helped to inflict on their fellow man means nothing if you're young and attractive.

I have no idea what the finished disc will look like as I was provided with only the film, without any options. The picture is clean and the 5.1 track did a good job at pumping out the rock music being played during all the chase sequences.

Ultimately, this is not a deep film, but it is a lot of fun to watch with a cold beer. Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.

6

Charles Packer