Film: Skate Or Die
Release date: 5th April 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Miguel Courtois
Starring: Mickey Mahut, Idriss Diop, Elsa Pataky
Genre: Action
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: France
A photogenic young cast, an exotic city and lots of skateboarding action sounds like the recipe for cult hit - so what has gone wrong here?
After witnessing a drug deal gone bad, two aimless skaters find themselves on the run from crooked cops, who chase them across the streets of Paris intent on rubbing them out to protect their secret.
Armed with just their skateboards, the teenage targets have to utilise all their skills to stay alive…
Light on plot and character development, but heavy on urgency, Skate Or Die is a French curio that infuses the traditional chase thriller with a skateboarding motif in what feels like a rather cynical attempt to corner the youth market. Pitched somewhere between Crank and District 13, this high concept might have served as a thrilling platform from which to launch a breathless narrative packed with dizzyingly inventive set-pieces, but while it certainly reaches for the sort of kinetic madness perhaps more synonymous with popular Asian cinema, Skate Or Die is simply unable to get out of second gear - its action scenes a literal skateboard in a race against the motorbikes of Hong Kong, Japan or Korea.
Director Miguel Courtois’s commitment to arresting visuals and relentless pacing across a blissfully short running time is commendable but, in mistaking a thumping soundtrack for energy, he applies the brakes to his own narrative. The opening skating scenes are presented in oddly obscure shots, cut together with a style of editing best described as disorienting - the technical double-fault robbing audience of any vicarious exhilaration. But what becomes apparent, when the fast-cut editing style gives way to longer takes where the ‘skater boys’ show their stuff, is that skateboarding simply isn’t cinematic enough to sustain an action movie - particularly one with a clichéd script that neglects to give as much attention to character motivation and back-story as it does to kick-flips. As the film rolls towards its overwrought conclusion, topped off with a disarmingly amoral coda, the audience is eventually disengaged by a succession of poorly-staged action sequences distinguishable only by the time of day in which they take place.
The two leads, photogenic and likeable, are physically very talented, but are unable to bring the same natural flair and flamboyance to the non-skateboarding sequences. As drug dealer-cum-guide Dany, Elsa Pataky has an effortlessly charismatic presence that brings the film to life in the, sadly few, scenes she is in to steal, leaving one wondering if Courtois and company didn’t pick the wrong character to send scurrying around Paris. There is talent on show here, but talent that deserves better material.
Sadly a lot less than the sum of its parts, Skate Or Die is a muddled, misguided effort that never shakes off its inherent irrelevance, and actually ends up feeling calculated and cynical when it should feel free-wheeling and joyous. JN
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