Maybe I would have liked it better with the English subtitles on

MBunge

This tired old love story about a rich girl and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks does distinguish itself in several ways.

1. The girl isn't really rich. She's more like the Eurotrash spawn of the comfortably upper middle class.

2. The boy really is poor, yet drives around in a souped-up muscle car that had to have cost tens of thousands of dollars to make it what it is. Considering that the boy shares bunkbeds with his retarded brother in his jobless dad's unit in a public housing complex, I think all that money could have been spent more wisely.

3. The boy starts out the story with a pregnant girlfriend. That he leaves her to be with the not-really-rich girl isn't unusual. What's strange is that the pregnant girlfriend spends much of her time on screen drinking and smoking. I know the English can be a bit lax on oral hygiene, but I can't believe they're so blasé about alcohol, tobacco and unborn children.

4. The not-really-rich girl indulges in self-mutilation, which the boy and everyone else seems to regard as a hobby and not a sign of deep emotional problems.

5. The boy is part of the street racing sub-culture in Brighton, England and the movie sets up a big race with some bad guys…which the boy then wins through pure dumb luck. I don't think I've ever seen another film where the hero has his moment of glory thanks entirely to random chance.

6. The girl starts out with a Eurotrash boyfriend, but instead of that guy beating up the boy and telling him to stay away from the girl, the boy is the one who decks him and turns the boyfriend into a cowering wussy before the movie is even halfway over.

7. This film does have a moment that demonstrates how cell phones have become the bane of lazy writers. The boy goes to a garden outside the girl's home and texts her to come out and meet him. They boy then gets a call about a fire at the garage where he works. The boy leaves and the girl is supposed to think he's deserted her…but why wouldn't he simply text her again on his way to the garage and explain it to her? Damn you technology for making it harder to justify stupid romantic misunderstandings! 8. Octane is not only a gritty, urban romance. It's also a public service announcement about the dangers of huffing aerosol sprays.

9. There's a menacing guy in a fancy car who appears to be a superfluous bad guy that writer/director Mark Jay forgot about. He constantly shows up and glares at the boy, even seems to be responsible for some of the bad things that happen to him, but menacing guy doesn't take part in the big race and simply disappears from the story.

Besides all that, a weird running gag involving geometry and occasionally unintelligible working class English accents, everything else in Octane is pretty much by the numbers. The direction is okay and the acting, especially by Karl Davies and Lauren Steventon as the young lovebirds, is good. It's just that there's been hundreds of American movies and TV shows that told this exact same story in almost the exact same way. Unless you need to see some evidence America and England actually are two countries divided by a common language, there's nothing here worth your while.

score 3/10

MBunge 22 June 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2447435/