Lost review: STREETS OF LEGEND

This review never saw print, but now that the movie’s out on DVD, it’s time.

Car Trouble
Streets of Legend is neither Fast nor Furious.

The main selling point of Streets of Legend is that it features real street racers really driving neck-and-neck at illegal speeds on the streets of Los Angeles at night. No Hollywood stuntmen here! However, there are two major drawbacks to this gimmick. Firstly, the movie is not a documentary. Secondly, less surprisingly, the non-actors selected for the cast live up to their description by not acting. Perhaps if the movie were all action, that wouldn’t matter so much. The driving, however, is but a tangent — Streets of Legend is first and foremost a love story, and not a very good one.

Director Joey Curtis says that his idea was to make a modern-day West Side Story, because lord knows that hasn’t been tried already. Not that this is a musical, nor set in New York, but never mind — it has people with different skin colors who kiss. Occasionally, they do more, as in one of the movie’s early scenes, where some oral satisfaction results in an awkward moment due to neither party having any tissues to hand. Didn’t wanna know that? At least you didn’t have to watch it.

The recipient of the bad blowjob is Joaquin “Chato” Hernandez (Victor Lanios), a Latino youngster on probation. The other party to the encounter is not his girlfriend. That girlfriend would be Noza (Brihanna Hernandez), who’s still in school, but old enough to drive. When Chato fails a drug test, she drives home alone, and when she learns the truth about his indiscretions, refuses to take his calls from prison.

Then one night her friends take her to watch an illegal street race. The cops bust it up, and she gets separated from her posse, but picked up in the nick of time by Derek Smith (Robert Beaumont), a Caucasian racer with a sensitive-guy soul patch. She nicknames him “Quattro,” after his Audi, and writes her phone number on his arm. It’s love. He even lets her meet his dad (Gary Brockette), a former racer who’s now a house-painter with a bad cough.

All of this plot takes over an hour. Why so slow? Well, Curtis seems to want every single scene to play like a dream, with superimposed images, tricks with lighting, whispered voice over, and the like. It’s really cool at first, especially the opening credits sequence that makes the downtown lights of L.A. at night look like fireworks. But it doesn’t move the narrative forward at all, and after about 45 minutes, enough of this is enough. Meanwhile, we don’t actually learn much about the street racing scene that the movie is ostensibly being true to.

Curtis’ first-time actors at least look the part. There are no Vin Diesels or Paul Walkers among them, though the eight-year age difference between Hernandez and Beaumont is very pronounced, as she comes across younger than she is (21 in reality, but looks 16) and seems to be playing a high-schooler. Beaumont looks all of his 29 years, which makes the romance feel like potential statutory rape.

They don’t actually have sex onscreen, but there is a rape scene in the film, one that’s intercut with scenes of street racing. It’s an editorial idea that was better exemplified in the cult martial arts flick Black Belt Jones 2: The Tattoo Connection, where it was impossible to take too seriously. Here, it just seems lame.

Worse is when the movie tries to give the cast some big dramatic moments that they’re in no way capable of. When Derek and Noza are on a date, he gets to reveal his Big Traumatic Secret in a manner that plays like a Trey Parker parody, and later, another character gets a death scene that’s painful for all the wrong reasons. The one major actor who’s decent is the one who’s had a little experience — Gary Brockette. Complaining about all his son’s traffic tickets and modifications to the family car, he wonders aloud, “What is this shit with the lights off?”

“Stealth mode” responds Derek.

“How ‘bout I put a stealth boot up your ass?” retorts the old man. You wish he’d deliver on the threat. It might give Beaumont’s performance a bit more energy.

Though Streets of Legend probably won’t be viewed by many Pete Wilson/anti-immigration types, it’s interesting to note that in some ways, it confirms their fears. White boys, don’t you dare date Mexican girls, or violent gangbangers will beat you up. Also don’t get into street races with minority types, or you’ll get in some bad trouble. This isn’t the message the film-makers intended to convey, but it isn’t a stretch to read it in.

And frankly, when every scene is shot like an underwater dream sequence, without concern for moving things along (ironic for a movie about fast driving, yes?), there’s a lot of time for one’s mind to wander and look for subtext. The running time is 92 minutes; it feels like twice that.