Vehicle 19

The degree to which Vehicle 19 flounders and ultimately fails is, to put it mildly, rather disappointing, as the movie boasts a seemingly foolproof setup that is, at the outset, heightened by the promise of Paul Walker’s turn as the central character. The spare narrative, which follows Walker’s Michael Woods as he picks up a rental car with ties to a corrupt police detective, unfolds at an unconscionably deliberate pace that results in a total absence of momentum, with the viewer unable, at any time, to work up any real interest in or enthusiasm for the protagonist’s increasingly perilous plight. And although filmmaker Mukunda Michael Dewil does a nice job of exploiting the movie’s African setting, Vehicle 19, quicker than one might’ve preferred, inevitably establishes itself as just another generic actioner with few elements designed to separate it from its similarly-themed brethren. It’s clear, too, that Walker’s less-than-engrossing performance ranks high on the film’s list of unimpressive attributes, as the actor, despite his best efforts, is simply unable to transform his thinly-developed character into a figure worth rooting for and sympathizing with. The only real respite from the otherwise pervasive tedium comes in the form of a surprisingly tense climax, with the strength of this short-lived stretch standing as an apt look into into what the movie could have been (instead of what it actually is) – with the end result a film that barely feels as though it would’ve worked as a 15 minute short (let alone a full-length feature).

*1/2 out of ****