Speed Kills

The story is an interesting premise and It feels like the film has promise, even though it does go down the well worn track of life of gangster/drug dealer that ends badly. However, as it plays along it never delves deeper into either the characters or the story. It seems like you are watching an abridged short story of the supposed true life on which it is based and are always wanting more. Also the makeup of John Travolta is appalling. It is so bad that it actually is a distraction as you can't take your eyes off it. Could have been a lot better.

You could watch this movie on mute and it would be just as watchable. Ok, first things first it looks like john travolta is wearing a john travolta mask. The movie starts with white old Urkel wanting to buy a boat then it gets weird and not the good kind of weird you know what I'm talking about. This movie will make you laugh and not because it is funny but because it is so terrible.

In the first 12 minutes I was done. A movie about the history of powerboats? Cool I will watch. So it's starts in the 1969 and Travolta looks out at the sea while talking to his new lawyer. There are two boats racing, one has a mid 2000s Mercury 135 the other has a early 2000s Mariner 75. Then he walks up to a dock and I see a sea of modern 4 stroke outboards in the 1960! Amazing. He gets on a boat and the guy tells him it has twin 327 chevys, yet it only has exhaust for one motor and a throttle for one motor. When he pulls it into his driveway you can see the single v drive.

People don't make car movies from the past and show modern cars, don't make a movie from the past and show modern outboards.

Stupid.

This is a bizarre movie. It starts out with crazy intensity between Old John Travolta and Old Other Guy who ends up standing menacingly by his truck just staring at him.

Then it goes back in time. Travolta is in trouble with the mob and has to get his family out of town. So he goes to Florida and... immediately gets super involved in speedboat racing for some reason? People watching and clapping and him getting hooked right away are kind of ridiculous, especially if Travolta's supposed to be on the run - why enter and win a bunch of boat races and get that kind of attention?

But I guess it's OK because this hood fresh in town gets the OK from Meyer Lansky himself, for some reason.

Lots more pointless boat racing. He cheats on his wife for like a decade and she knows but does nothing about it I guess. His son goes in the hospital while he's off winning one of his races. His boat racing gets in the way of his mob duties and Meyer gets mad at him.

It's so bizarre and Travolta LOOKS so bizarre in his various ages in this movie but it at least kept our attention. Until we turned it off.

But I've seen so many bad movies, if I even see some resemblance of something good, I guess I am satisfied to a degree. And I'm not talking about the good looking female actors who got cast here, I mean certain plot points and whatever was made of something that is if I understood correctly, based on a true story and true characters.

Some very fine actors turn up in this, some a bit over the top and certain things feel like they are planted but no one gets near to ... well reap whatever that might have suggested. Still there is enough suspense even in the phoned in performances ... just don't expect too much from it