Fast Company

Directed by David Cronenberg, Fast Company follows several drag racers, including William Smith’s Lonnie Johnson and Nicholas Campbell’s Billy Brooker, as they run afoul of their sponsor’s scheming, corrupt team boss (John Saxon’s Phil Adamson). Filmmaker Cronenberg, working from a script written with Phil Savath and Courtney Smith, delivers an exceedingly (and sometimes excessively) lackadaisical endeavor that benefits from its easygoing, affable atmosphere, as the movie boasts a fairly irresistible emphasis on the happenings in and around the 1970s drag-racing scene in Western Canada – with the pervasively agreeable vibe heightened by the comfortably familiar narrative and assortment of personable, charismatic protagonists. (Saxon’s deliciously smarmy turn as the movie’s mustache-twirling villain remains an obvious highlight within the proceedings, ultimately.) The all-too-slight bent of the movie’s storyline does, however, prevent one from wholeheartedly connecting to the material for most of its appreciatively brisk running time, although the relatively exciting (and almost incongruously over-the-top) finale does ensure that the entire thing concludes on a positive note – which does, in the end, cement Fast Company‘s place as a decent-enough entry within Cronenberg’s hit-and-miss filmography.

**1/2 out of ****