You’ve heard of the video game Grand Theft Auto, right? Well in the greater Toronto area, that moniker is used to represent the fact that a car is stolen there every 97 seconds. And a young guy named Mikey has been playing that real-world game since he was 15.
Mikey’s first theft was just an ugly old Toyota Corolla he and a schoolmate lifted for a joy ride. And over the years, he’s connected with strip shops and other movers and shakers who could turn his thievery into some walking-around money. Now, twentysomething Mikey is itching for more. He’s already graduated to boosting more high-end rides, but he’s still getting fairly low-end cash in return.
Hey, he’s taking the risks. He figures he deserves to get the big bucks, the home, the pool and the women, too. Problem is, once you start pushing your luck, your luck is bound to run out.
And that’s exactly what happens to Mikey when he decides to grab a certain Shelby Cobra GT. It’s a really sweet car and Mikey is able to easily steal it, but it happens to belong to a cop. And while the Toronto police don’t put in a lot of effort to slow car theft in the city, when it’s one of their own, they try harder.
Next thing you know, Mikey’s facing cops who are ready to throw the book at him. They’ve got a list of his past and present charges that could put him away for a while. Unless, of course, he’s willing to play along and become an inside man in the city’s biggest car theft ring. The police will help him get in, and Mikey just needs to funnel information out.
Hey, it should be an easy gig for a guy like Mikey. It’s just another game of Grand Theft Auto. Of course, in this game, the bone-breaking thugs with guns and baseball bats … aren’t digital.
Looked at through a tight squint, one might notice the brief acknowledgment that entertainment can effect our real-world values and choices (which I’ll touch on again in the conclusion). But even that is probably giving this film more credit than it deserves.
A Shakespeare quote refers to “the gods.”
Women in short skirts and low-cut outfits dance and party in several club scenes. And a group of women in bikinis expose quite a bit of skin while lounging around a pool. A young woman named Ava (the girlfriend of the car theft ring’s boss, Charlie) dances and grinds against men in a club. She also flirts openly with Mikey, and the two kiss. (It’s also implied that they have sex.) We later see her in a t-shirt and panties as the camera ogles her backside closely. Ava and Charlie dance and kiss passionately as well.
While lined up at a table in a makeshift drug lab, several women are dressed in facemasks and skimpy underwear. One, oddly, wears a see-through net t-shirt. Charlie’s business partner Sammy talks crudely to a woman about having sex in a threesome.
Charlie and Sammy are both depicted as volatile men who can easily be nudged into a rage. When Ava dances and grinds against a man on the dancefloor, for instance, Charlie walks up and smashes a bottle on the man’s head. Then he proceeds to kick the downed man savagely (just off-camera). For his part, we see Sammy viciously beat a man for honking his car horn behind him. And later he grabs a tool and drills into a man’s crotch (again, bloodlessly and off screen.)
Later in the film, numerous people are held at gunpoint and characters are killed in a bloody gunfight. Several individuals are shot in the forehead (in a couple cases by police who have no reason to open fire). Blood splatters the scenery and nearby people.
Some 70 f-words and 10 s-words are mixed in with several uses each of the words “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “a–” and ”h—.” There are numerous crude references made to both male and female genitalia (including one use of the c-word). And God’s and Jesus’ names are misused seven times total. (God is combined with “d–n” twice.) Several people flash offensive hand gestures.
Charlie smokes cigarettes on occasion. And Mikey smokes weed with someone. Ava hands out nondescript pills that people swallow for a high. Charlie’s partner, Sammy, makes arrangements to start producing cocaine as a side business. We see people packaging the drug, kilos of it stashed away for shipment and Sammy snorting some of it.
Early on, the film gives viewers a narrated tutorial on how best to steal a car, create fake keys and documents and cover up your handiwork. And, of course, lots of cars are stolen. Mikey vomits in a sink.
Early on, car thief Mikey says, “I’ve got one message for society: If you don’t wanna encourage crime, stop making movies about it.”
Of course, there’s a certain irony in that sentiment, because REV itself is nothing more than a very low-rent pic focused on crime. Yeah, there’s an element of police enforcement in the movie mix. But the cops are depicted as inept bozos, while the film’s car theft and drug ring enterprises are depicted as very viable ways of making boundless bundles of cash. The film doesn’t exactly glorify those pursuits, but it falls just shy of doing so.
OK, let me cut to the chase: this is quite plainly a dreadful film … and it doesn’t even have a chase. REV wants to tempt viewers, through exotic cars and bikini-clad girls, into thinking it’s a Fast and Furious clone. It’s not. It’s a D-grade derivative film full of f-bombs and terrible acting.
In fact, the real crime here is this pic’s pointless pilfering of its viewer’s time.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
