Ross v Ross

‘I am tyre-d of the same old faces… the same old things…’ These Hercules In New York quips don’t write themselves you know. Yep, some idiot actually writes them. Let’s just find out what Ross McG thought of tyre-killer-thriller Rubber then. In America they spell ‘tyre’ ‘tire’.

Rubber (two stars)

In its spellbindingly bonkers trailer, Rubber promises the story of a psychotic killer tyre that roams the dusty roads of Nowheresville, USA, bumping off truckers and cops by some kind of mind control that makes their heads explode. Even if tyres don’t have minds, this seems like a genius premise for a film. Like another remake of The Hitcher, except with a tyre instead of Rutger Hauer. Unfortunately, stretching the brilliance of its promo to a full-length feature is beyond director Quentin Dupieux, who becomes bogged down with pretentious delusions of grandeur. This should be Steven Spielberg’s Duel for the social networking age but fatally the film tries too hard to pass comment on how Hollywood treats its audience – the proceedings are framed by a group of bystanders with binoculars, who watch what’s going on like the rest of us. All this does is detract from the action, which is a pity, because watching Robert (yes, the tyre is called Robert) graduate from blowing the heads off rabbits to blowing the heads off humans is often quite touching.

This review first appeared in the Metro newspaper

This entry was posted on April 18, 2011 at 4:31 pm and is filed under REVIEWS with tags DVD, Movies, REVIEWS, Rubber. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.