| HOT-WIRE MY HEART : Vinny Murphy's 'Accelerator' (1999) [6/10] |
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| Monday, 26 September 2005 | |
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A spikily genial cross between Gone In 60 Seconds, interMission, Two Lane Blacktop and TV's Wacky Races, 1999's Emerald Isle joyriding extravaganza Accelerator still stands as a nifty calling-card for its director/co-writer Murphy and star Stuart Sinclair Blyth. In the six years since the picture was completed, Blyth's most notable credit has been as the psychotic nemesis of the hero in Richard Jobson's otherwise-dire 16 Years of Alcohol (2003) - since which, his only big-screen appearance has been in Jobson's follow-up The Purifiers (2004), which has yet to obtain cinematic distribution in the UK. He'd perhaps be well-advised to hook up with Murphy again: in terms of achievement Accelerator leaves 16 Years choking in the dust. Indeed, it's surprising that Murphy hasn't come up with another feature in the intervening half-decade. Great to look at - thanks to (John Boorman collaborator) Seamus Deasy's slick cinematography - and packed with serious hardware from start to finish, Accelerator was clearly no cheap enterprise. And one can only presume that it didn't perform sufficiently well at the Irish box-office (there was no UK release) to propel Murphy towards the bigger/better projects he would seem to deserve. In fact, out of all the picture's contributors the most notable are, by some way, Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp (they make up the group which takes its name from the latter's moniker) who worked together on the score and the song which accompanies the end-credit roll (Goldfrapp spelled as 'Goldfrap' therein. Blyth - resembling a young Aidan Quinn from some angles, a very young Anthony Hopkins from others (Lecter-prequel casting-agents please take note) - makes for an engagingly charismatic hero as Johnny T, a hedonistic twentyish Belfast car-thief who dreams of escaping to a new life in sunny Barcelona. His auto-klepto antics mean he's made plenty of enemies who would also love to see him disappear into the sunset - including, in the opening scene, a pair of baseball bat-wielding paramilitaries. Hightailing it to hide out with pals in Dublin, he doesn't waste any time in renewing former hostilities the local alpha male, namely the highly-strung, thuggish Whacker (Gavin Kelty) - both seeing themselves as cock of the walk and king of the road. In head-spinningly quick time, Johnny and Whacker decide to settle their differences by means of a Belfast-to-Dublin road-race in stolen cars. This rapidly snowballs into a six-vehicle event with each motor carrying (in a decidedly non-PC touch) a male driver and a female "navigator". Hand-brake turns are the order of the day, as high-octane comic/violent/tragic shenanigans duly ensue. Made with the financial support of several august Irish film-funding bodies, Accelerator is clearly intended to stand toe-to-toe - or rather bumper-to-bumper - with the most commercial Hollywood product, while retaining a distinctive home-grown flavour. It's to Murphy's credit - and that of his co-screenwriter Mark Stewart and their suitably exuberant cast - that they mostly manage to pull off this decidedly tricky proposition. This isn't just a story that could take place anywhere in the world where bored kids steal cars for fun: the political realities of 1999 are evident every time the characters get anywhere near the Ireland/UK border, patrolled at that time by gun-toting British soldiers. One presumes that Her Majesty's forces provided the hefty ordinance we see on-screen, including huge, fortified vehicles and, in the latter stages, a helicopter. Add to this the 'body-count' of smashed vehicles, and you soon end up with a dauntingly expensive affair: hence the involvement of those august funding-bodies. The trouble is, having such "benefactors" means that Accelerator can't help but promote a sensible, responsible message to its target audience: joyriding is Very Bad; speeding is Very Bad; driving while high on drink and/or drugs is Very Bad. Crime must not pay - indeed, it much result in severe penalties for all concerned, which is somewhat disconcerting as these wisecracking youngsters aren't exactly ubercriminals. A lower budget might actually have worked to Murphy's advantage - a rougher DV look might have proved a better fit for the characters and their milieu, although there's a certain logic in providing such a glossy framework for teenagers unhappy with their quotidian lot and desperate to escape into the exciting night-world of games like Grand Theft Auto. As it is, from around the halfway mark the tone takes a shift into a rather more serious gear as the 'race' idea falls by the wayside and the cars hit the skids in a one-by-one style which calls to mind Walter Hill's seminal gang-picture The Warriors (1979). This is especially the case in one chilling, surprisingly graphic sequence in which a hapless couple take a wrong turn into a quiet rural village where the locals prove anything but welcoming. The net result, while watchable, economically handled and niftily scored, does come across a bit like a moralistic, extremely elaborate public-information advert: older viewers may be waiting for Sir Robert Mark to pop up and inform us that what we've been watching is a "major contribution to road safety," rather than just a raucously enjoyable adventure about kids who feel the need for speed. Neil Young 26th September, 2005 ACCELERATOR : [6/10] : Ireland 1999 : Vinny MURPHY : 96 mins seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK), 21st September 2005 with thanks to Paco Sweetman |
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