Are racing movies also sports movies? I think so. Even when the focus is someone piloting a car, motorcycle, bicycle, scooter, hydrofoil, or hovercraft, those kinds of films share a great deal with the sports genre. So much so that they feel like a subgenre. At the end of the day, they share multiple tropes, including:

• The protagonist is directionless initially.
• They are usually working class.
• A love of the sport provides them with focus and/or moral clarity.
• They initially compete and, due to overconfidence, get their ass spanked.
• They form a rivalry, and their rival is usually wealthy.
• A crusty mentor with a heart of gold takes them under their wing.
• Training montages!
• The protagonist meets a love interest.
• The love interest has their own challenge that the protagonist is semi-interested in.
• The protagonist says or does something stupid, usually due to a last flare-up of overconfidence.
• The protagonist pisses off the mentor and/or the love interest.
• Sad protagonist montage!
• The protagonist reckons with their flaws.
• The final competition takes place.
• The protagonist either wins or earns a moral victory.

The thing I have come to learn about sports movies is that, most of the time, trying to avoid tropes is a waste of time. Yes, it’s sometimes nice to see a film like Million Dollar Baby that veers into a radically different direction when you least expect it. But there’s a reason why Rocky is still huge, and why my son discovered that film on his own and fell hopelessly in love with it. The key is execution, the filmmaker’s ability to make tropes feel less like…well, tropes. That’s the real strength of the new motorcycle racing drama One Fast Move. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and it really doesn’t need to.

We’re introduced to Wes (KJ Apa), a young man who’s not exactly lighting the world on fire. We know that because he’s in the military, yet he’s also involved with illegal street racing. When the military police arrive, Wes leads them on a merry chase, then gets tossed in the brig for six months. After that, he’s discharged.

Wes heads home, not that there’s much waiting for him. He has no friends, and his mother died long ago. His father Dean (Eric Dane) peaced out of there the nanosecond he learned he’d be a parent, and focused on the motorcycle racing circuit. Dean is good, good enough that he’s been in the game for twenty years and developed both a strong reputation and a strong ego.

Wes is (just barely) smart enough to realize that a) motorcycle racing is his true love and b) Dean is his ticket to becoming good, if not great. Quite quickly, the two of them reconnect, and Dean agrees to train Wes. The bad news is that Dean is kind of selfish, sort of a jerk, and almost certainly a functional alcoholic. Wes needs someone positive in his life and Dean is…um…not that.

The good news is that two other people enter Wes’ life who aren’t walking disasters. The first is Abel (Edward James Olmos), the owner of a local motorcycle shop. Abel has been tight with Dean for years, and he sees potential in Wes. He gives the young man a job and responsibility, two things Wes deeply needs. The second person is Camila (Maia Reficco), a young woman working her way through nursing school. She and Wes fall for each other because they both embody what the other needs, and because Camila is literally the only major female character. From there, Wes will train and learn what it takes to become a champion.

When I first heard about One Fast Move, I wondered if it wouldn’t just be a retread (Haw!) of Tony Scott’s Days of Thunder, but on two wheels instead of four. I was curious if this would be another movie about an overconfident, speed-obsessed himbo who needs to learn What Really Matters. As it turns out, that’s not entirely the case. In a weird, but good, way, director Kelly Blatz has made a laid-back hangout movie about motorcycle culture that features the occasional race. To be sure, Blatz’s racing scenes have plenty of kinetic energy. They’re well shot, tightly edited, and created to give a real sense of speed. But Blatz’s film feels more interested in getting to know Wes, understanding what makes him tick, and showing us how he spends his days and why it matters. The irony is that we have a racing movie with a profoundly chill tone, and I’m very okay with that.

I believe all that because Blatz is the screenwriter, and he takes the time to show us who these people are. There are numerous scenes where we see Wes in the motorcycle shop, entering into a sweet romance with Camila, and dealing with his complicated feelings toward Dean. I never felt the restlessness of other films that want to get to the race scenes immediately and have a singular focus of “Must…go…faster!” by the protagonist. Are the characters largely archetypes? Yeah, sure. We’ve got the unfocused hero, the deadbeat Dad, the cute love interest, the rich rival.* It’s fine, because Blatz utilizes these characters cleanly and clearly. Not every film needs to pioneer originality. I maintain that if Wes had been a Czech goat herder with a passion for racing and Dean was an evil wizard using the kinetic energy from motorcycles to capture the secret of immortality, we would not actually have a better film.** Archetypes keep sticking around because they work, and for the most part, they work here.

It’s also true that when the right actors are cast, the archetype concept can go down a whole lot easier. Overall, I liked KJ Apa’s performance as Wes. Speaking as a formerly young man, many young men tend to be highly unfocused and sort of dumb. Apa captures that. For quite a while, Wes makes some impressively stupid mistakes. Over time, we see him learn, grow, and take the initial steps of the man he’s meant to be. Apa also avoids the pitfall many actors would hit in this role, which is to make Wes a surly jerk. He’s actually a super nice guy, and I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with a lead who wasn’t a dick. Speaking of dicks, Eric Dane has the flashier role of the ne’er-do-well Dean. It’s a similarly nuanced performance, and once in a while, Dane pulls back the bravado and gives us a peek into Dean’s self-loathing. I liked Edward James Olmos quite a bit. His character acts as a kind of moral mentor to Wes, as opposed to the traditional trainer role that Dean plays. Olmos’ performance has an understated decency, and it’s a solid comparison to Eric Dane’s flashier role.

To my mind, One Fast Move fits nicely into the sports genre. It doesn’t exactly reinvent the spoke wheel, and there are moments where we can feel the genre conventions a little heavier than we should. Those moments don’t come around too often, thankfully. When it needs to, this film moves pretty well.

*Though not really! A rich guy and his racer son are set up more as rivals for Dean. As far as Wes is concerned, there doesn’t seem to be any animosity. I’m hoping for a deleted scene where the two young men agree their fathers were acting like idiots and head off to have a beer together.

**Having said that, I’m cool with it if the filmmakers want to use this for the sequel.

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.