Producers: Bill Bindley, Mike Karz, Matt Luber and Lena Roklin Director: Kelly Blatz Screenplay: Kelly Blatz Cast: K.J. Apa, Eric Dane, Maia Reficco, Edward James Olmos, Jackson Hurst, Austin North, Adam Thomas Ziemba, Libby Blake and Rose Bianco Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios/Prime Video
Grade: C-
It’s difficult to say which are more numerous—the cycles or the clichés—in Kelly Blatz’s movie about a young biker who aims to become a pro in the motorcycle speedway circuit. Blatz, an actor whose writing-directing debut “Senior Love Triangle” (2019) won some praise, stumbles in his second turn around the track, offering a warmed-over retread of the kind of sports story we’ve seen many times before, souped up with a heavy-handed message about how lusting after glory can undermine one’s chance at real happiness.
Wes Neal (K.J. Apa) is introduced at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he and the other soldiers engage in macho competition. Challenged to a street motorcycle race, he jumps at the chance, but things go badly and he’s forced to flee from the cops, doing a lot of damage in the process. He’s arrested, and after six months in the brig is dishonorably discharged.
His one desire is to race professionally, so he seeks out his biological father Dean Miller (Eric Dane), who abandoned his mother when she was pregnant because all he wanted to do was race, and believed that families held racers back from following their dream. Dean actually achieved some success in the sport, but a back injury hobbled him, and now he’s a has-been, wallowing in booze and one-night stands while eking out a living working in a cycle shop owned by grizzled Abel (Edward James Olmos) near the Road Atlanta speedway (the shoot was in Georgia).
Dean initially puts Wes off, telling him he’s just too old to hone his skills for the rigors of pro competition. But eventually he agrees to train the boy (predictable push-ups and other exercises ensue), and avuncular Abel takes him on in the shop too, even though he never seems to have any customers. The ensemble is completed when Wes meets Camilla (Maia Reficco), a pretty waitress who’s also a single mom with a darling boy (Adam Thomas Ziemba).
Blatz tries to invest the character relationships with some depth, and he succeeds to some extent with Dean, simply because Dane works hard to make the physically and emotionally broken man a genuine person, imperfect and not terribly likable. But Apa prefers posing to acting, sporting a perpetually glum look; and it doesn’t help his performance that Blatz treats him as beefcake, overlooking no opportunity to have Wes strip off his shirt so viewers can see his impressive physique. (Fans from the actor’s run as Archie Andrews on “Riverdale” will probably appreciate that, though.) Meanwhile Olmos shambles about with long white hair, spouting words of supposed wisdom and eventually doubling down on the movie’s moral by telling Wes that he neglected his family too, and feels guilty about it.
There’s occasional racing action—the script introduces another coach (Jackson Hurst) and young rider (Austin North) to serve as rivals to Dean and Wes. And in the end, “One Fast Move” ends up exactly where you expect it will—at the track, and the finish of a make-or-break race against formidable opponents—Wes’ conflicting desires, on the one hand, and a racer we won’t identify here on the other. By then, of course, Dean has become his son’s biggest booster, even offering him one of his treasured classic bikes; but Wes has come to realize that his dad is trying to achieve his dream of glory vicariously through him, which causes a rift. And the boy must decide whether to make the same mistake as his father did (and has been pushing him toward)—choosing the single-minded pursuit of racing fame over the possibility of a fulfilling family life by leaving Camilla behind.
In technical terms the movie is decent enough for a moderately-budgeted flick. Freddy Waff’s production design is at best functional, but Nami Melamad’s music is propulsive, especially in the racing sequences that are nicely shot by Luca Del Puppo and edited by Seth Clark (elsewhere the framing can be pretty bland and the pacing lethargic). The crowds of spectators at the track, however, are pretty small.
One expects that, except for Apa devotees and motorcycle enthusiasts, the number of viewers for “One Fast Move” will be modest, too.