Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Phil Savath, Courtney Smith, and David Cronenberg
Fast Company is an unremarkable movie except for how it loves cars, engines, and drag racing. It almost loves these things as much as its characters do, the drivers and mechanics that tour North America to burn rubber for a quarter mile at a time. The cars, how they’re put together and how they move, are fascinating. The rest? No.
Lonnie “Lucky Man” Johnson, played with weathered virility by William Smith, has been a drag race star for years. A legend of the circuit, he’s admired by his teammate Billy “The Kid” Brooker (Nicholas Campbell), an up-and-coming racer eager to go faster. He’s less admired by a greasy suit named Adamson (John Saxon), who’s tired of Lonnie’s want to win because that requires investing in the car. Adamson just wants people to buy engine oil from the brand emblazoned on Johnson’s car.
Competitive ambition and corporate bean counting therefore clash, but it turns out strapping yourself to a rocket that could explode at any moment isn’t nearly as dangerous as the dirty games going on behind the scenes.
The thin story is really just a skid mark from which Cronenberg peels off, because Fast Company really just wants to race, man. With a rock and roll soundtrack that’s never heard of an office job, it lionizes the petrol heads, their camaraderie, their daring, their drive, and in particular their lifestyle and how it is graced by hot babes. It all smells like engine oil and lukewarm Budweiser and amounts to a beery burp.
Cronenberg’s undeniable fascination with the machines and their output shines through the smoke, however, and Fast Company transforms on the tarmac. The cars growl and snap at the air when idle, the torque of their engines see them almost somersault in place at the touch of a pedal. Before that green light flashes, they’re champing at the bit.
Cronenberg clearly loves these heaving and snarling machines. At one point he puts you inside one of the rocket cars, and for 6.5 seconds, you get to experience what it’s like when the world is torn in two by the rip-roar of your engine and the force it can put down, the road bunching up like a runner rug behind you while the world flies at you, loud and surprised.
But, you know, this is just 6.5 seconds of nitroglycerin dropped into the stale beer that is the remaining 89 minutes and 53.5 seconds of Fast Company. Once it’s walking, the company you keep in Cronenberg’s movie is just one-track thrillseekers and dastardly company men, their collective journey as predictable as the quarter mile strip they race on.
Mikkel Frederiksen 