It seems small at first. A man renting a car, touring the area. Hints are given of his potential life problems, such as an issue with his girlfriend that either signals past mistakes or lack of commitment. It seems at first to be a small movie, simply about a man with a car, trying to put his life back together. But then it changes. The car contains a gun and a kidnapped woman. The woman is being hunted by local corrupt police. The race to keep her alive is on. Those are the stakes which the trailer for Vehicle 19, Paul Walker’s latest film, contain.
The trailer seems interesting enough, with a decent character arc being teased and the choreography of the chase scenes looking nice. But the trailer contains a major weakness, albeit one that is the selling point of the film: its containment. The trailer seems small because it is a “contained thriller”, where the point-of-view is only from one character’s perspective. That doesn’t seem like a bad thing at first– done right, a film that only shows the POV of one person can be a great character study– but the problem is that the trailer presents us with the idea that most of the film is Walker in the car. That severely limits the dramatic possibilities of what can occur, and the fact that he is in such a small area makes the stakes seem incredibly small. This wouldn’t be so bad…if the film didn’t contain major action, with exploding cars and rowdy chases. Scenes of that nature naturally require higher stakes, and the tension between the need for big action and small perspective makes this trailer seem very off. Perhaps the film can prove me wrong, but for that, I need to see bigger…and quickly.
Vehicle 19 is written and directed by Mukanda Michael Dewil and will be released this year.
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