Accelerator (2000)

Why so much hype?

People are voting emotionally.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

I can't believe somebody liked this film. (Yer man above)This is a poor cross between Cannonball (Gumball), and 'smart' movies of the 90's such as Pulp Fiction, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels etc. It tries to employ the multiple storyline spread across multiple characters, which best works when they merge together in a finale, or cross paths in some ironic manner, but this story goes nowhere. The paths of each group barely cross, the characters are barely explored, hence there is no sense of motivation, and so much of the action seems senseless - like it suited the scriptwriter to simply kill off this character because he couldn't find any use for him in the story. Or alternatively to make some guy go on a suicide mission with virtually no explanation of why he would do this, except for a naive psychological profile for dummies where 'Anto has no father + his mother is an alcoholic = Anto robs cars for fun... Its insultingly stupid. Basically the entire premise of the story is arbitrary, and the execution of it goes absolutely nowhere. Its the most half-assed Irish feature film I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them.

Yeah, I liked this movie. It's actually quite good. Strange that the DVD (region 2) I rented to watch it on kept returning to the menu after each chapter (on my Powerbook G3). I don't know whether other people have also experienced this problem, but it seriously detracted from the overall movie. The movie is great in itself though. It's somewhat of a realistic "Gone in 60 seconds" or a serious "Cannonball Run".

Bunch of dublin scangers and their belfast scanger pals have a race from belfast to dublin , whoever gets to the pope's cross in the phoenix park first wins all the money (i think it's 1200 quid). We meet some interesting characters-wacker, who is the tough guy of the dublin gang and is an illiterate psychopath; crunchie, whose diet consists of nothing but crunchie bars (talk about product placement); anto who is a mellow myopic geek and is the most lovable of the characters; And Johnny T from belfast who is in a spot of trouble with the provos and wants to move to Barcelona. There isn't too much 'racing' in the film, it's more concerned with what happens to each car separately. Backed up by pounding factory beat type music and a spot of easy listening for anto of course. On the whole-deadly!Rapidd!! Leave your brain at your gaff and enjoy the ride 7/10

When I saw this movie, I had never heard anything about it before. Often that's the best way to see a film, and have an objective look at it. This movie starts of promising with a car chase scene, accompanied by loud drum and bass-like music. The tone is set: another movie about young people in the slums of some Anglo- Irish city ( compare Trainspotting), with lots of modern music. The music in fact is the only thing that remained interesting during the whole movie. For the rest, it's nothing more than a sympathetic effort to make a film about these youngsters, their boredom and the illegal race it results in. Oh, and there's something about the problems in Northern Ireland as well! Most of the characters are quiet flat and the acting often is well meant, but very poor. And the race, witch takes up most of the time of the movie, is in fact a bit boring. There are much more interesting films about illegal car races, like for example the classics "Two-Lane Backtop" and "Vanishing Point" ( I bet you the makers were influenced by these movies!) Finally, I recently saw a much more interesting and natural film about youngsters and their problems, with no car chases at all, and hardly any loud, modern music. That was the recent Swedish picture "Fucking Åmål". Now there's a movie I'd really recommend!