'Redline': fast cars, slow plot
"Redline," an action flick loaded with cars, chrome, and silicone, is everything you'd expect it to be, and yet so much less: less character development, less believability, and most unforgivably, less escapist entertainment.
Like "Gone in Sixty Seconds" and other car porn masquerading as cinema, the array of sexy automobiles (all owned by producer Daniel Sadek ) have more personality and better lines, if not curves, than the actors driving them.
Director Andy Cheng peppers us with shots of sudsy, souped-up rear ends getting sprayed with water from long hoses. A few of those even belong to the women.
The ludicrous plot centers on aspiring rock singer turned race-car driver Natasha Martin (Rhode Island's Nadia Bjorlin , resembling a taller, sharper-witted Carmen Electra). Her dad died in a fiery car crash a few years earlier, and to avenge his death and win her band a lucrative recording contract, she gets involved with some high-rolling gamblers who bet on illegal drag races.
Yet for a movie that worships speed, the retreaded storyline and cliche-clogged characters of "Redline" made it feel as slow as a '72 VW Bus lurching uphill. Among other diversions, we get a kidnapping scheme, a war hero (Nathan Phillips) who returns from Iraq to save the day, hot moms, more dead relatives, a psychotic vegetarian (Angus Macfadyen), and the difficulty of finding true love amid all the automatic weapons and slo-mo explosions.
All this cartoon color ultimately feels washed out, and the film gets flattened under the weight of its own implausibility. Not even the producer's 
