This movie is like a longer, very well written and slightly more violent than normal episode of Walker, Texas Ranger
and I mean that in a complimentary and completely unsnarky way. Throw in some gratuitous nudity and Exit Speed would have made a worthwhile drive-in flick about 30some years ago. It's a solidly written, effectively directed and well performed melodrama.
The plot is straight forward. A bus full of people heading down a Texas highway runs into a gang of violent and crazy bikers. The bus folk end up running over and killing two of the bikers, leading the rest of the gang to chase them down a back road and into a deserted junkyard where the bus passengers barricade themselves in and try and hold off their menacing enemies until they can figure out how to get help. I know that doesn't sound like much of a story, but it works because these filmmakers give all the bus passengers fairly distinct personalities and purposes to serve while keeping the audience genuinely in suspense as to how many of them, if any, are going to survive. None of it is terribly complex or deep. It's just simple, direct and engaging.
Now, Exit Speed does have a decent-sized flaw in that the biker gang is never anything but a generic threat. They have no individual personalities or even any lines of dialog. You could have replaced them with a pack of wild coyotes or escaped lions from a traveling circus and there's very little you'd have to change about the story. And for some reason, the bikers are repeatedly shown doing these little riding tricks, like wheelies or there's this one guy who stands on top of his motorcycle and surfs it as it goes down the road. Apparently, these filmmakers thought showing violent, drug-addicted gang members doing these little riding tricks would make them seem more intimidating. It really, really, really doesn't. It makes them look more like hardware store owners and accountants who pretend to be a biker gang on the weekends. These crack smoking savages also demonstrate a level of patience, restraint and tactical thinking that's hard to believe.
The flatness of its villains doesn't detract from the overall enjoyable nature of this film. There's efficient and unpretentious storytelling at work here that I quite liked. Now, I have seen a lot of cinematic excrement, movies so poorly written, asininely directed and atrociously acted that I may be over praising Exit Speed a bit. This isn't anything more than a thoroughly competent and professionally constructed "B" movie, but I've seen so many failed attempts at this exact same thing that I want to acknowledge when it's done well.
The plot is straight forward. A bus full of people heading down a Texas highway runs into a gang of violent and crazy bikers. The bus folk end up running over and killing two of the bikers, leading the rest of the gang to chase them down a back road and into a deserted junkyard where the bus passengers barricade themselves in and try and hold off their menacing enemies until they can figure out how to get help. I know that doesn't sound like much of a story, but it works because these filmmakers give all the bus passengers fairly distinct personalities and purposes to serve while keeping the audience genuinely in suspense as to how many of them, if any, are going to survive. None of it is terribly complex or deep. It's just simple, direct and engaging.
Now, Exit Speed does have a decent-sized flaw in that the biker gang is never anything but a generic threat. They have no individual personalities or even any lines of dialog. You could have replaced them with a pack of wild coyotes or escaped lions from a traveling circus and there's very little you'd have to change about the story. And for some reason, the bikers are repeatedly shown doing these little riding tricks, like wheelies or there's this one guy who stands on top of his motorcycle and surfs it as it goes down the road. Apparently, these filmmakers thought showing violent, drug-addicted gang members doing these little riding tricks would make them seem more intimidating. It really, really, really doesn't. It makes them look more like hardware store owners and accountants who pretend to be a biker gang on the weekends. These crack smoking savages also demonstrate a level of patience, restraint and tactical thinking that's hard to believe.
The flatness of its villains doesn't detract from the overall enjoyable nature of this film. There's efficient and unpretentious storytelling at work here that I quite liked. Now, I have seen a lot of cinematic excrement, movies so poorly written, asininely directed and atrociously acted that I may be over praising Exit Speed a bit. This isn't anything more than a thoroughly competent and professionally constructed "B" movie, but I've seen so many failed attempts at this exact same thing that I want to acknowledge when it's done well.