DVD Review: Streets of Legend
Streets of Legend is a unique film. It doesn't use actors. It doesn't use sets. It doesn't close off streets to do the race scenes. It doesn't use stuntmen to drive the cars. And it doesn't even get permission to break the law. Everything you see in this film is completely real... well, real-ish. Yeah, the people really fight each other in the fight scenes, but only because that's what the story called for, so after the director yells CUT the guys stop. Get the idea? Okay, so while this may sound really, really cool, the final product is actually very, very boring.
The story here isn't too hard to follow. We start with a streetracer named Chato. He has a girlfriend named Noza. Chato, however, seems to like getting it on with Noza's best friend. So after Chato gets himself incarcerated for failing his drug test, Noza finds out about this affair. Got that? Okay, next we have another streetracer, Derek. He lives with his Dad and helps him paint houses or something. So one night at an illegal street race, he meets Noza. They hit it off pretty well. Unfortunately, when Chato finds out that Noza is breaking up with him and has a new guy in her life, he breaks out, and needless to say, confrontation occurs. I won't tell you how it ends, just that I think they could have cooked up something MUCH better. You definitely won't walk away from this moving feeling good.
Okay, so that's the summary. If it doesn't sound like much, that's because it isn't. So you might think that the rest of the film is filled up with some sweet street racin', but it turns out that's not really the case. Yeah, there is some, but not nearly as much as you'd expect. And most of it doesn't even have anything to do with the story! It's like hey, here's some story, and here's some street racing... enjoy. Now, remember how I said everything in this film is real? Well, even though it sounds like a cool idea, the fact is that it just doesn't look that good. Since it's real, they couldn't really set up those fancy camera rigs to get all those awesome camera angles. You mostly just get shots from someone using a hand held camera filming out the window of another car. Oh, and the film uses this blurry effect a lot, which get's really annoying. If it was supposed make the cars look like they were moving wicked fast, then if failed.
Another thing that threw me off was the perspective. The film kind of looked stretched out, as if it was a fullscreen movie stretched out to fill a widescreen. So that was kind of annoying, as was the fact that parts of the film looked very grainy. Is it too much to ask for some consistency? And man, this was just boring. Very boring. About forty minutes into this movie I found myself constantly slamming the against my skull. I couldn't wait for it to end. And then when it was finally over, I saw that it had some extra features. Urgh! But luckily they were all pretty short. Of course, they were all pretty much as boring as the movie. Let's see, there was Mini-documentary: Racing Extra, The Crash (nope, you don't get to see a crash), Street Fights (longer versions of the hand-to-hand fighting seen in the movie), The Blow Out at 140 MPH (I don't know what this was, just seemed like one of the scenes from the movie). Anyway, what else can I say? Sorry this review is so short, it's just that there's not much to this movie, and what is there sucks pretty bad. So if you value your free time, then STAY AWAY!
Streets of Legend was released by Lions Gate on DVD starting January 24, 2006. It stars Brihanna Hernandez as Noza Flores, Victor Larios as Joaquin "Chato" Hernandez, and Robert Beaumont as Derek "Quattro" Smith.
