InsidePulse Review – Supercross

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Image courtesy of www.impawards.com

Director :

Steve Boyum

Cast :

Steve Howey……….K.C. Carlyle
Mike Vogel……….Trip Carlyle
Cameron Richardson……….Piper Cole
Sophia Bush……….Zoe Lang
Channing Tatum……….Rowdy Sparks
Robert Patrick……….Earl Cole

Every year there is always a plethora of some movie type, and this year we’ve been treated to an overdose of underdog sports movies. From the absolute drivel that was Ice Princess and Herbie: Fully Loaded to the genre’s peak in 2005 with the Billy Bob Thornton vehicle Bad News Bears and Samuel L Jackson’s turn as Coach Carter, underdog stories have been rather popular in 2005. And coinciding with the beginning of the X-Games comes an underdog story in one of its more photogenic sports in Supercross.

Supercross follows two brothers who are extreme sports athletes, K.C (Steve Howey) and Trip (Mike Vogel) Carlyle. They clean pools during the day and dream of being amongst the precious few that can make a living as professional Supercross competitors. K.C is offered to become a pro rider as the blocker for Rowdy Sparks (Channing Tatum) while Trip works out a deal with Earl Cole (Robert Patrick). Added to this are love interests for K.C and Trip in rich girl Zoe Lang (Sophia Bush) and Piper Cole (Cameron Richardson) respectively. Throw in some romance, dash in some danger and finish it all off with a Supercross event for $100,000 and you have the elements of the underdog sports movie for those who prefer non-traditional sports. Too bad about an hour or so of the movie has been cut out in exchange for impressive visuals of motorcycle racing.

And that’s the bulk of the movie, which barely makes it past the 70 minute mark. The visuals are very impressive, as Steve Boyum has a knack for taking a photogenic sport and crafting solid action sequences in between the impressive motorcycle jumps. When the movie focuses on the racing itself it does create a tense atmosphere; there is a lot of drama mixed in with the spectacle to create an illusion that there’s more to the movie than just race sequences. But sadly, that’s almost all of what comprises Supercross.

There’s just enough plot crammed in between motorcycle jump highlights to keep it from being an X-Games commercial; the movie focuses loosely on the Carlyle brothers attempt at becoming professional racers as his the highs and lows of being niche sports athletes struggling to make ends meet. And developed more, this could’ve been a pretty good movie as the elements are there for a quality story about two people pursuing a dream. But there isn’t enough of anything to establish any sort of characters, much less the main ones.

The whole cast is shortchanged due to any sort of meaningful character development. The Carlyle boys aren’t given enough character development to even be one-dimensional, as well as any sort of meaningful sub plots dropped early on, in favor of crowd shots and racing sequences. It’s not small things that can be inferred as happening, its large gaping holes in the story that are missing that could otherwise have developed a much more coherent story. One minute K.C is struggling to ask Zoe out on a date, the next they are in the midst of a burgeoning love affair between a rich girl and a not so rich biker. It’s the same with the other brother, as one minute Trip is competing against Piper and the next he’s taking her shirt off. There are major developments in there that are missing that could, at the least, fill in the sizable gaps of plot that are missing.