phishyjerry
Action thriller my ass. This movie is as boring as watching paint dry. I don't understand why he locked his doors with his roof open. You could just reach in and unlock it if you really wanted to steal it. There is no way he would be able to stand let alone walk after his legs were crushed against the wall. Pretty bad acting all the way through. The dude in the viper speeds off and you hear tires squealing but there is no smoke or tire marks left behind. Why doesn't that truck run out of gas throughout the movie. There is no way even a full tank would last all night in a truck that size, even if it was just idling. Which it obviously isn't. What the hell is wrong with the repo man?!?! Is he blind or stupid? (I'm writing this as I watch it) Low budget, two thumbs down
MBunge
This low budget suspense thriller is a great example of what more low budget filmmakers should strive for. Throttle is a solid idea underlying a well thought out story and brought to life by a capable cast and crew. It's got just enough sizzle to hold the audience's attention and just enough substance to make them care about how things turn out. It's neither self-indulgent nor self-referential and it doesn't try too hard. This is a good and solid piece of entertainment.Tom Weaver (Grayson McCouch) works at a financial company. He seems to have a great job and a beautiful wife named Molly (Amy Locane). It's not all that it seems, though. Tom thinks his wife is cheating on him and he's about to conspire with his smarmy co-worker Gavin (Adrian Paul) on a scheme to steal 10 million dollars and transfer it into offshore accounts. Tom and Gavin meet one night at their offices to pull off the scam and seemingly succeed. But then Tom finds himself trapped in the bottom level of the building's underground parking garage, pursued by a man in a souped-up black truck who wants to kill Tom and anyone else who gets in his way.It wouldn't be far off to say this movie is like Duel in a parking garage. However, Throttle does not make the classic mistake of being nothing but a clever concept. Good stories generally have secondary conflicts and relationships woven through and around the concept, in this case it being Tom's relationship with Molly and his inner conflict over the criminal act he's committed. Those elements not only flesh out the film so it's more than a guy running hither and yon in fear of his life, they also give you a reason to care about the guy and whether or not he gets killed. Too many movies simply assume the audience's interest in their main character and never give you any reason to identify with him or root for her to succeed.Throttle also looks very good. In fairness, this isn't all that cheap a production as low budget filmmaking goes. There's more stunt work and destruction here than could be paid for with a couple of credit cards. But no matter how much money you have and no matter what level of skill you possess, you can always make things look good by working within your limitations. This film has just a few action sequences and the rest is good camera placement and sharp editing. A lot of the shots are pretty basic, but they're arranged and executed with talent and vision. Visuals don't have to be complex to be compelling. These filmmakers take maximum advantage of their parking garage setting and something as ordinary as bright light to create some impressive imagery.Now, it's not like the movie is perfect. It indulges in too many flashbacks, particularly ones that remind us of stuff previously shown in the film. The killer also has way too much motivation and spends too much time explaining it all. There's also an unnecessary does of extra drama squeezed into the conclusion.Throttle is an exciting and scary tale told with a little intelligence and a lot of craft. The people who made this movie are people who should make movies for a living. You can't say that about many low budget filmmakers.
JoeytheBrit
This is one of those movies that presents itself as a kind of homage to an earlier classic while really just amounting to little more than a rehash of the original's central theme. As you watch you can almost imagine the full extent of the writer's thought processes: I'll make Duel. In an underground car park.And that's it.The references to Spielberg's early 70s TV flick are too blatant to be missed - at one point a Dennis Weaver lookalike casts a baleful glance in our hero's direction as he drives past in a red car identical to the one Weaver drove in Duel, and the main character's name is also Weaver. He's a good guy who has flirted with badness in the form of a $10 million business scam with his crooked boss before pulling out at the last minute. Our hero is lantern-jawed and handsome in that bland and plastic style beloved of daytime soap TV producers, and possesses all the initiative of a paper cup.The movie presents us with an array of possible culprits as we watch Weaver being chased for reasons unknown around the car park by a huge truck with a bank of floodlights mounted on its cabin roof : could it be the new security guard with the attitude? The (possibly) cheating wife? The friendly security guard? The slimy boss? The jealous would-be lover? All that is certain is that, whoever it is, their reasons will in no way justify the laborious manner in which they pursue their quarry. The truck's driver seems to alternate between wanting to mash the hapless Weaver into the tarmac and merely toying with him for no good reason. And the engine of their vehicle has some kind of silent mode which means its victims (and the viewer)never hear it approaching until escape from its path is impossible.The acting ranges from barely adequate to mind-blowingly awful, and the attempts at mystery and tension are woefully poor. The dialogue is also incredibly dull. Give this one a miss.
Chris Quigley
It won't take me long to describe this one. A guy gets chased around a car park by a madman in a black hummer. The end. Whats amazing about this film is how they managed to stretch the running time of the film to 90 minutes. At most this should have been a 20 minute short story.Ludicrous plot, appalling acting (the bit at the end where the old "madman" starts crying is hilarious"), silly action scenes; this film offers nothing apart from hilarity.Awful.By the way, the only reason I have given it 2 out of 10 is because I managed to sit through the whole film.