SPEED RACER: Gotta Go Fast

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Directors: Lana and Lilly Wachowski
Writers: Lilly and Lana Wachowski
Cast: Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, Kick Gurry, Paulie Litt, Roger Allam, Rain
Runtime: 135 mins.
2008

The film opens with a flash of color, then the camera creeps in on the back of a racer. We hear the sounds of revving engines and squealing tires. We see the racer's foot tapping in anticipation. Then, a match cut to a child's pencil tapping on a standardized test. This is a flashback that shows us a glimpse of Speed Racer's troubled youth. The teachers consider him a problem child because all he wants to do, all he can really focus on, is racing. The boy sits at his desk, his concentration ebbing, until the drab classroom transforms into multicolored streaks of light, the essence of speed, and the little boy is driving just like his older brother Rex.

What follows is an extended sequence of adult Speed Racer racing, intercut with inserts of his family cheering him on from the crowd, each of which zips us away into another propulsive flashback that fills out Speed's relationship with all of the main characters and contextualizes the importance of the race. Typically "propulsive flashback" is something of an oxymoron, but not here. This isn't like Deadpool's clever but pedestrian use of backstory in the midst of action. This sequence is edited, paced, and scored such that even when we have entered quiet character moments, we feel as if we have never left the race.

All of this adds up to a stunning twenty minutes of discovery and emotion, culminating in Speed racing the ghost of his dead older brother for the course record. It is the absolute perfect way to begin this film, an opening that perhaps only compares to Up with regard to sheer bang for your buck, emotional investment refined into the most efficient and efficacious package.

I knew from one minute in that Speed Racer would be a masterpiece.



Yet, this probably comes as something of a surprise to you, since upon its release eight years ago it was roundly dismissed. The public (including myself) ignored it and the critics gave it a beating. I would take this moment to point out that this is what tends to happen to movies that are unequivocally ahead of their time. Speed Racer may be the most forward-thinking, innovative popcorn blockbuster I have ever seen.

In order to feel that way, though, you'll have to get over a few things. First, the frenetic candy-colored visuals. This movie is Mario Kart on crack cocaine, and it very well may give you a Lite Brite headache. The film includes live action actors, but they are layered against primarily animated and CG backgrounds. Upon its release Speed Racer suffered many critiques concerning incoherent and overdone visuals. I would argue the opposite. The Wachowskis create the definitive Saturday morning cartoon fantasy world in this movie, a unique cinematic achievement 100% tailored to its tone and story material. Nobody lambastes Nolan's Batman films for having a darker visual palette than is typically reasonable. That fits there and this fits here. Also, the action scenes are surprisingly coherent. The cars may be capable of absurd feats by our definition of physics (what action movie cars aren't?), but they feel like they have a real weight to them, and the way they force and jostle against each other is constantly and rewardingly consistent within the world it sets for itself.

You also might need to get over the humor. This is a kids' movie, after all, and while the humor never condescends (with, for me, one notable exception), it is silly. By silly I don't mean stupid. By silly I mean fun. John Goodman twirling evil ninjas over his head then body slamming them into a table levels of fun. You won't find any of the Dreamworksian pop culture references that are meant to remind the adults they haven't been forgotten. . . you'll only find pure expressions of laughter and joy.

The final conceivable hangup I can imagine people having with this movie is how genuine and heartfelt it is. We live in an age of irony and deconstruction. This mindset has led to some stone cold classics (the aforementioned The Dark Knight) and some boggling misfires (the humanity-violating Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), but the one thing all of the classics have in common is that there is something genuine at their core. This is the essence of storytelling, the reason we even bother to open our mouths in the first place. Unless you're just looking to cash a check.

It would have been so easy for the Wachowski sisters to approach the frankly ridiculous Speed Racer property with ire, sarcasm, or even flat-out disdain. Instead, they made the radical decision to love it. This leads to a movie that condemns telling stories at the behest of soulless capitalism, a movie in which its characters speak plainly from the heart, a movie in which the main character's arc is NOT to prove his individual worth by showing others how wrong they are about him, but rather to activate his potential by proving to his loved ones how right they are about him. Speed Racer is brimming with love and goodness, and for folks who have become acclimated to cloaking themselves with irony, it may strike them as cloying or supersaccharine. It is akin to staring directly into the sun.

I hope you can get past these things, because Speed Racer worked on me like no movie ever has. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and am already feeling the pressing need to watch it again. The film is worth checking out for the master class in editing alone. I have no idea how editors Roger Barton + Zach Staenberg manage to make the quick-cutting pixie stick action sequences coherent, but they do. The pacing crackles throughout. This is a 2+ hour long movie, but when no shot lingers a moment longer than it needs to, and there is never a single dull or tangential moment, the whole thing goes by in a breeze. Of course, the editing would not be able to hold its own without Michael Giacchino's adrenaline-fueled scoring, somehow even zippier than his work on The Incredibles. Plus, the Wachowski sisters' clockwork efficient staging and the actors' tight performances certainly don't hurt. Really, Speed Racer is the rare and transcendent example of a film where every aspect improves every other aspect to the point that the synthesis creates a whole far greater than any individual part.

That's the point of the movie, when you get down to it: Speed is a genius racer, but he could never accomplish what he does without the support of the right people. Not the capitalist mogul who wants him to embrace greedy individualism, but the family who encourages him to be the greatest possible version of himself. If only more movies took a few lessons from these brilliant sister-directors, we would have more Speed Racers in the world.

4.5 / 5  BLOBS