This live action adaptation of the anime by the Wachowski brothers was very poorly received, which is why I never watched it. Since one of the brothers has been in the news again recently, some discussion went on to cover their previous work and I read that while this isn’t a good film, it may at least be a visually unique one. Having now watched it, I certainly agree that it has a bold artistic vision but that’s not enough to make this bloated and nonsensical monstrosity worth watching.

The Racer family is mad about motorsports with the father owning a small racecar manufacturing business and the eldest son Rex is a record-breaking driver. Speed grows up idolizing Rex but he is killed in a rallying event. That doesn’t deter him from being a driver himself when he grows older with the support of his family and his girlfriend Trixie. When he wins an important race and nearly breaks his brother’s record, he is inundated by sponsorship deals including one from the owner of Royalton Industries. When Speed turns down the offer, the enraged owner reveals that the real motorsports world is about business and the races are all fixed anyway. He goes on to attack the Racer family, getting other drivers to sabotage Speed’s events and suing their company for copyright infringement. A government agency offers a reprieve, explaining that they have been trying to gather evidence of Royalton’s criminal activities for years. They need Speed to participate in a rallying event with the son of the owner of a rival company with the mysterious Racer X who appears to work on behalf of the government.

Not being a fan of the manga or anime, I have no idea how faithful an adaptation this is but I suspect quite a lot of the crazy stuff in here comes from the source material. For example, the setup shows Speed growing up in the shadow of his elder brother Rex and that’s it. But then cut to Speed being a young man himself and suddenly not only is there another little boy around the house, revealed to be the youngest son Sprittle, there’s his pet chimpanzee Chim Chim as well. It’s confusing and off-putting because there was no prior introduction scene for them. It’s clear later that both are them serve only as comic relief. Similarly we can safely guess all of the crazy stuff the cars can do like jumping around and the weapons they are equipped with are from there. This doesn’t feel like actual racing to me at all as we have no idea what the rules are and seemingly anything is allowed. It’s basically vehicular gladiatorial combat and being the last man standing.

The visuals are indeed striking and I imagine that this is far as you can live action without this actually being full on animated film. Sprittle and Chim Chim are all about fourth-wall breaking visual gags that I imagine are straight out of the manga. When the racing gets intense, the film unapologetically erupts into a riotous explosion of colors. Unfortunately this also contributes to making the entire experience feel totally fake. There is real worldbuilding effort and we have no idea how this world moved from traditional motor racing as seen in the black and white footage to the hyper-real physics defying comic-book version we get here. There’s no weight to anything and nothing really matters, with even as assassination attempt on the family by ninjas being played for laughs. The Wachowski brothers unfortunately don’t seem to be good comedic directors so this film is not actually funny and its attempts to be funny are actually painful.

If this were shorter, I might consider recommending it just on the basis of its visuals and the kinetic action scenes. For example as a fan of rally games, I’m annoyed that this film characterizes rallies as unregulated deathtraps but I do recognize that some of the scenery is inspired by real-world rally locations. But the film is just too long and its characters and plot too dumb to really bother with. Sorry but this is one film that really should be forgotten.