Support Shadows: Buy a Poster

There's a lot of exciting vroom-vroom action here that keeps us watching, even as the story sinks slowly and surely into silly, contrived melodrama. Luke proves that Antwone Fisher was no fluke, he really can carry a movie on his muscly shoulders! Fishburne (who apparently never gets tired of wearing black trenchcoats) seems almost hilariously relaxed; and there's good support from the mammoth ensemble cast, even when they have to deliver achingly corny dialog. Director-cowriter Blythewood seems to have forgotten that his movie is so preposterously unbelievable that no audience was ever going to take it seriously. So weighing it down with a deep and meaningful plot throws it way off balance. In a film about illegal motorbike racers, why bother with a half-hearted romance and a soap opera family-in-crisis storyline? It's watchable, but by the time the high noon finale comes along, it's already drifting from your memory.