Vehicle 19

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We need a new rating here at IMDb: 0 or unwatchable. I am regular reader at IMDb for perhaps 5 years, but this was the first movie that forced me to get registered and write a review of it. Everything about this movie seems to be a cliché of a cliché. Completely amateur and without sequence. This part of this film was the most funny: Then he finds a gun in his car. What does he do? Throw it away? No, he decides because the car has a gun in it, he doesn't like it any more, and he abandons it in the middle of a dangerous South African township and starts walking!..... I was expecting more because Paul Walker it is a great actor but this film made him look like an amateur. In conclusion, never watch this movie. Don't waste your time with this one.

I was very saddened, as was everyone, by the recent passing of Paul Walker. He may not have been the finest actor around, but he had charisma and screen presence. He seemed to love doing movies involving cars as a central theme. Unfortunately this may have skewed his decision on deciding to do 'Vehicle 19', because not many could debate this was a blight on his career. The first thing that must be mentioned is the grim view it portrays of Johannesburg, South Africa. From what I understand of the place (having never been) what we see is quite accurate to how things really are, but it just felt as though the quantity it was shown in was overkill. There were constantly people coming up to cars with knives demanding wallets, or kids coming up and distracting from one window while another child steals things from the other window, or even people driving by a pulled over police car and throwing things at it before driving off. Just a few examples of things that just kept coming up and were for the most part completely unrelated to the story and held little relevance to anything. Perhaps writer/director Mukunda Michael Dewil had a bad experience there once? The writing is lazy throughout. The opening scene shows Walker's character in a car chase trying to avoid the police. The screen then pauses and we are shown the word on the screen "earlier". I don't mind beginning a movie with a scene that takes place later in the piece, but the scene needs to provide at least some intrigue or mystery. This movie is called 'Vehicle 19', it wouldn't have taken a genius to work out there would be a car chase in it at some point. The set-up is incredibly lazy, to the point that no explanation is even attempted as to why Walker's character is given the wrong car in the first place. The characters make incredibly unrealistic decisions throughout which makes it really hard to have any empathy for them. Naima McLean's acting was near unwatchable. Walker himself does what he can with a terrible script and terrible actors to work off. I was actually impressed with the effort he put in. I'm sure he realised pretty early in the piece what a shocker he'd signed on to, so it can't have been easy. It's a real shame this movie has to stay on Walker's résumé, especially in the latter part of it. He had some pretty good movies in his time, 'Joy Ride' being a personal favourite of mine and of course the 'Fast and Furious' series. Of course no actor is clean of the odd shocker so it'll be forgiven. But I plead with you - if you get the urge to go and rent/buy some Walker films to remember him by just skip over this one.

I give it 10 out of 10, not because it's the most amazing film out there, but because I feel it's a shame it has a rating below 5, and I'd like to boost it as much as possible! The trailer says it all, what you see is what you get, plus some unexpected turns, which I will save you (no spoilers here!). This is your average "framed & chased by corrupt policemen guy in a car... in another country". This is a solid entertainment, a highly watchable and quite tense action thriller, which is smart enough to keep it short and simple. Both me and my wife enjoyed it quite a bit. The film is quite short - less than 80 minutes if you don't count the credits - and I think it's a good thing, because it's light and it's over way before it manages to get boring. I'm sick and tired of overdecorated and pompous action smash hits with tons of CGI, where everything is predictable and lacks any individuality. Nothing here is over the top or out of place. The main character is far from a saint and still by the end he gets really likable and people cheer for him. The African setting is refreshing. It adds to the odds against Paul Walker, and helps the foreign audience identify with him - just like the guy we feel lost and kinda desperate. To me it felt like an EuropaCorp flick - you know, the Besson-produced type of action. So if you like movies like the Transporter, Taken, B-13, etc. then I highly recommend this one! There are a few things I could criticize. The African rap for example annoyed my ears, but I admit it was well used to create atmosphere. In some scenes the character "explains" what happens, because it is not shown well (which is a kind of a cinematic failure) - like when two kids steal from him, I didn't get what exactly they took and there was a line like "They stole my glasses." - just a calm statement to make it clear for you. And they could actually add a minute in the end to show us the character AFTER all that happened, instead you get a voice-over of a news report, which explains you where he is and what happened with him, and then the credits roll. We could at least hear Paul Walker's voice... but it was like "OK, no time to shoot another scene, it's a wrap guys, we'll figure something out for the ending later." Here I felt like there's something missing to make the final scene really satisfying, but it doesn't mean you feel letdown or cheated in the end. And to wrap it up myself - It's a simple entertainment and it's simply entertaining. Wish there were more movies like that coming out - engaging, fast-paced and short (or at least not too long!).