ONE FAST MOVE - Mark Reviews Movies

One Fast Move, Amazon MGM Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 8, 2024

Racing is secondary to the story of One Fast Move. Instead, writer/director Kelly Blatz focuses on the attitude and behavior of its main characters, an estranged son and father who find a tenuous union in a desire to go fast and a need to win. The film doesn't have much more to say than that, but with the attention to the human side of its tale and some solid performances, that turns out to be enough.

The son is Wes Neal (K.J. Apa), enlisted in the Army when we first meet him. His time in the military doesn't last long, because someone challenges him to a motorcycle street race and Wes isn't the type to dismiss a contest or think much of the consequences of taking up one. Before the race can be completed, Wes is being chased by the military police, causes one of their vehicles to crash, and is arrested.

That incident leads to a six-month incarceration in military prison and a dishonorable discharge from the service. With nothing left to lose, Wes hits the road on his bike to find the man who left Wes' mother before he was born—not with the hope of some happy reunion and father-son bonding, either.

No, Wes has only known one thing about his father: He races motorcycles. At one point, his old man was pretty good at it, too, but now, Wes finds Dean Miller (Eric Dane) dealing with the aftermath of a devastating spinal injury, barely keeping up with the pack in a race, and drowning his ever-dwindling career in booze and one-night stands. The man's not quite washed-up just yet, but give it another race and post-finish line session at the bar or two.

When Wes introduces himself by dropping his mother's name, the fading racer decides to bring him out to the bar. The two don't have much time to talk, what with Dean's self-centeredness and his need to be the life of the party. It doesn't matter. That's not why Wes has come to see his father, anyway.

He wants Dean to give him a shot on the track, and while the long-time racer is in denial about his losing prospects, he does know it's the case. Maybe his son taking up his mantel would be the second-best thing to winning himself.

Apart from the minimal racing scenes, the film isn't flashy or romantic about the sport or its characters. There's a desperation to Wes and Dean that does join the two men, even though neither actually wants anything to do with the other in any other way. Wes gave up hope of having Dean as any kind of real father a long time ago, and Dean left his son and Wes' mother for only one reason. He couldn't be tied down by family. He had seen and known about other racers who tried to balance marriage and kids with a professional racing career, and the situation always turned out one way: The racing was the thing that had to give. Dean wasn't going to give up on a career at the age of 21, before it even had a chance to start.

It's refreshing to talk about this type of story in terms of its characters, instead of what must have been some temptation for Blatz to concentrate on the sports angle of his story. After all, the racing sequences here are fast, coherent, and occasionally exciting because the filmmaker stages them with real bikes and legitimate riders. Watching as they take tight turns and lean so far that a knee is almost scraping the pavement, there's a sense of the skill necessary to essentially drive in a loop, as well as the thrill of going that fast without anything else to consider.

The racing scenes, though, are more a punctuation to the drama than the main reason for the film's existence. It gives us the usual training montage, of course, as Dean speaks through Wes' helmet to give him advice, scold him on his throttling and braking techniques, and eventually encouraging him when a practice lap goes right. It's not much, obviously, but even the fact that part of the sports formula still offers some sense of who these two men are and what their relationship amounts to says something about Blatz's intentions here. They're not exclusively about sticking to the easy pattern and clichés of these kinds of movies.

As the father-son relationship grows as much as it can before hitting an inevitable wall, the screenplay fills the sides of the main story with characters who test Wes' drive to win and offer some other way of thinking about a life dedicated to racing. In the latter category is Edward James Olmos' Abel, who runs the shop that sponsors the father-son team and knows the regret of devoting a life to racing bikes.

Meanwhile, the former category belongs to Camila (Maia Reficco), a pretty waitress at a local diner who agrees to a few dates with Wes and eventually introduces the racer to her young son. Everything seems fine, until Dean starts talking about the perils of having personal connections as a racer and otherwise trying to sabotage the romance.

Dane's performance is a rounded one, portraying Dean as a sad and broken man who's willing to break others if it means even the possibility of regaining some of his former glory. He's no simple villain, however, just as Apa allows Wes to wrestle with his own demons and his fear that he might turn out like his father beyond the racing talent. One Fast Move is about these ideas, characters, and relationships first, leaving racing an admirably distant second.

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