Tracers (15) | Home Ents Review
Cast: Taylor Lautner, Marie Avgeropoulos, Adam Rayner, Rafi Gavron, Sam Medina
Since finding fame in The Twilight Saga, Taylor Lautner has tried his hands at several other projects including taking the lead role in 2011’s Abduction. Unfortunately nothing seems to be giving him stand out role that he needs to make a name for himself outside of his wolf pack; Tracers is no exception.
Lautner plays Cam, a young man barely scraping by in life after taking money from a load shark to pay for his mother to keep their home. When she passes, the loan sharks come knocking and Cam is drowned in debt, living in a garage and can’t seem to find a way out. That is until he literally runs into the mysterious Nikki (Avgeropoulos), who introduces him to her underground world of parkour involving high-risk excitement and quick money. At first Cam seems to appreciate this new life, until he delves deeper and realizes the easy money he has got used to has a price and he becomes the new target in this game of life and death.
The theme of the film is parkour, the urban sport by free runners where the aim of the game is to get from A to B in as fast as possible. If A is on top of building and B on the ground floor, what’s the quickest way to get there? Due to this theme, there is a lot of running in the movie, whether it is from bad guys, police officers or just practice runs across building tops and down stairs. The actors therefore that were going to take on these roles had to be young, nimble and brave and these personal were certainly that. They were also trained by the team behind the Skyfall stunts. As there appears to be no CGI involved in the scenes, the only reasonable conclusion is that all the stunt work is real making for some brave stunt work, incredible death-defying stunts, free-moving and high-jumping from a dry-docked ship, construction sites and rooftops, through to skylights and surfing down stairs and escalators. The prolonged chase scenes are a little mind boggling at times as they are in constant motion and stay on their tails of their subjects; however in the gist of it all they really put the viewer in the scene.
Urban crime with a touch of romance is what is created by this movie and although it may not be the film to catapult Taylor Lautner back to super stardom in the years after Twilight, it does demonstrate his athletic side, his ability to try new things and his maturity as a growing actor. Along with some gun violence, beatings and armed robberies as well as a few passionate make out scenes that may be unsuitable for younger viewers, please remember the most important thing of all, don’t try this at home!
To learn a little more about the technique of parkour and its origins, check out the special features on the DVD for a ‘making of Tracers’ special feature
Review by Michelle Moore
Tracers is release on DVD 21st September 2015
