TURBO KID (2015)

Studio:       XLrator Media
Director:    RKSS Collective
Writer:       RKSS Collective
Producer:  Anne-Marie Gelinas, Ant Timpson, Benoit Beaulieu, Tim Riley
Stars:     Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Aaron Jeffrey, Edwin Wright, Romano Orzari, Michael Ironside

Review Score:

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Summary

A teenage scavenger becomes an unlikely hero when a power mad warlord terrorizes the post-apocalyptic wasteland of 1997.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

By the year 1997, the world has become a wasteland scarred by war, with acid rain leaving the water toxin and the land barren. Having lost his mother in the post-apocalyptic chaos where every man is left to fend for himself, The Kid survives on his own by scavenging ruins and trading his discoveries for supplies.

At the scavenger’s bazaar, The Kid trades his latest finds to Bagu for tainted water and a Turbo Kid comic book. He also watches undefeated arm wrestler Frederic claim another victory before Frederic is called away by the news that criminal overlord Zeus has captured his brother. Elsewhere, Zeus has masked henchman Skeletron execute Frederic’s brother after he is defeated in a fighting competition.

In a deserted playground, The Kid meets Apple, a similarly aged girl who slaps a bracelet on The Kid’s wrist as a token of friendship. Realizing that Apple may be crazy after seeing her speak to a corpse, The Kid leaves her behind by riding away on his bike. Back in his makeshift home, The Kid discovers that the bracelet cannot be removed when he tries to do so and is knocked unconscious.

Skeletron attacks Frederic’s men and takes the arm wrestler prisoner for Zeus. Frederic attacks Zeus and his henchmen when he is forced to arm-wrestle as a captive in Zeus’ lair, but Skeletron unexpectedly severs Frederic’s arm with a buzzsaw.

The Kid wakes from a dream about he and his mother being attacked to find that Apple has tracked him using the bracelet. The Kid eventually relents to Apple’s insistence on friendship and he takes her scavenging with him as a romance begins. A masked bounty hunter suddenly throws a net over Apple, causing The Kid to flee.

The Kid falls through a trap door into an underground shelter only to discover that it is actually Turbo Rider’s crashed spacecraft. The Kid takes Turbo Rider’s costume and dons the turbo glove, which gives him the ability to fire energy projectiles from his hand. The Kid returns to confront the attacker who took Apple and makes him explode using the glove.

Apple is placed in Zeus’ fighting pit alongside Frederic. As Zeus prepares to “juice” his prisoners by extracting the water from their bodies, The Kid interrupts, but discovers that his glove is incapable of firing while it recharges. Zeus’ henchmen knock The Kid into the empty pool with the others, reuniting him with Apple.

Frederic, Apple, and The Kid kill their opponents. When Zeus refuses to set the winners free and shoots Apple, The Kid inadvertently creates a distraction by destroying the arena with his glove. The Kid then escapes with Apple and Frederic, although Frederic goes off on his own.

The Kid dreams of his first encounter with Zeus as a child. Upon waking, he learns that Apple survived Zeus’ gunshot because she is actually a robot. Bagu directs the two of them to a robot graveyard so that The Kid might find a bio-electric transmitter to repair Apple and prevent her from dying. Along the way, Apple teaches The Kid her robot fighting techniques as their romance continues developing.

Skeletron captures Bagu and brings him to Zeus, who tortures Bagu to discover The Kid’s whereabouts. After learning that The Kid and Apple went to the robot graveyard, Zeus has Skeletron kill Bagu.

Skeletron finds Apple and The Kid and chases them to the edge of the wasteland. Skeletron decapitates Apple with his saw. The Kid recovers her head, but falls over the edge into the fallout-riddled robot graveyard.

The Kid dreams of the time that Zeus and Skeletron murdered his parents, though not before his mother took out Zeus’ eye. The Kid wakes to discover that Frederic rescued him from the poisoned pit, but Apple is gone. Frederic reveals that after repairing his severed hand with material from the robot graveyard, he found a turbo mega-blaster and plans on destroying Zeus with it. Apple later recovers under her own power.

Frederic and The Kid battle Zeus’ henchmen. When the turbo mega-blaster timer fails to detonate and The Kid ends up at the mercy of Zeus’ female guard, Apple arrives in time to rescue him. After Apple returns the turbo glove to The Kid, Zeus shoots her through the heart. Zeus also shoots Frederic and The Kid, but The Kid is saved by the metal tin of Viewmaster reels given to him by his mother. The Kid recovers, taking out Zeus and the rest of his men using the turbo glove.

Apple recovers, as does Skeletron, but The Kid kills Skeletron with a beach parasol. When Zeus stands up on the battlefield, The Kid learns that Zeus is a robot. Zeus attacks using his energy powers, inadvertently recharging The Kid’s power glove and enabling The Kid to explode the mega-blaster, killing Zeus. The blast also triggers a geyser revealing a renewable source of clean water, but Apple is killed in the explosion.

Frederic survives and watches as The Kid buries Apple in the battle’s aftermath. With the water source uncovered and having thus saved countless lives, The Kid sets off on his bike to explore the rest of the wasteland on his own.

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Click here for Culture Crypt's interview with "Turbo Kid" filmmakers RKSS Collective.

Review:

While Snake Plissken infiltrates the crumbled ruins of post-apocalyptic Manhattan to rescue President Pleasence from the villainous Duke and his heinous henchmen, The Kid finds himself on a similarly perilous path towards hero-hood in a not-too-different kind of 1997 wasteland.  Ruined by war, polluted by toxins, and populated by metal-masked maniacs pedaling BMX dirt bikes, “Turbo Kid” operates under “Road Warrior” rules of every man, madman, and robot for himself during an ongoing struggle for survival in a weird world where clean water is currency, and severed limb blood sprays dance like the Bellagio fountain.

Since the years-ago murder of his parents, The Kid has wandered the wasteland as a solitary scavenger trading trinkets for food to feed himself and comics to fuel fantasies of superpowers.  The Kid has a chance to become a hero for real when he stumbles on the crashed spacecraft of the legendary Turbo Rider and takes the mighty turbo glove for himself.  He is going to need it, too.  Because now he not only has to rescue his crazy new companion Apple, but also a world-famous arm wrestler who has joined The Kid in the crosshairs of a wicked warmonger determined to literally squeeze the H2O out of every sad sack survivor’s bones.

From its first frames of a fumbled Rubik’s Cube rolling into a pike-poked garden of decapitated heads, to an opening credits collage of The Kid making Walkman moves to rival Star-Lord Peter Quill’s, “Turbo Kid” trumpets a take no prisoners attitude towards comic book craziness and camp championing charm.  Imagine “The Goonies” meets “Escape from New York” with the costuming of “Mad Max” and the sense of snark from “Guardians of the Galaxy” (review here).

If that doesn’t conjure a specific enough mixture of tone, style, and story, toss in Spielberg’s flair for childhood adventure, Carpenter’s proclivity to soak scores in synthesizers, Tarantino’s penchant for blood-dripping violence, and a kung-fu cinema sense of whip-zoom action.  Before anyone raises an eyebrow in question, yes, every one of those aforementioned references is absolutely necessary to encompass the full range of manic energy bursting forth from “Turbo Kid.”

Appealing particularly to film fans of a certain age, “Turbo Kid” chokes on so many 80s references that a second throat is required to swallow them all.  Pop song empowerment chorusing off a cassette tape.  Pulse-blast weaponry crafted from a Nintendo Power Glove.  A robot with a “Legend of Zelda” life bar for an energy gauge.  Whether it is bikes with mag wheels, Cobra Kai mantras, Viewmaster reels, or Indiana Jones arm-wrestling Mola Ram, there is something stuffed somewhere that has been pulled from every clamshell case or painted poster cover that ever adorned the beloved shelves of your local VHS video store.

Playing evil overlord Zeus, Michael Ironside is as menacing as ever.  That he connects a touchstone thread to vintage villains from the yesteryear that “Turbo Kid” honors is like every other fun-filled facet of the film, more frosting on a cake already capable of creating cavities at the snap of a finger.  Unable to decide if Ironside looks more coolly intimidating with a metal ornament eyepatch or a sculpted Greek god facemask, the movie makes the smart choice by outfitting him in both, since anything approaching subtlety is far outside the modus operandi.

Gore is in plentiful supply, and always goofily over-the-top.  Yet because the overall pulse beat of “Turbo Kid” is kept at a consistent level of controlled chaos, the outrageousness sizzles in those moments when the spotlight shines bright, without washing the rest of the scenery in silliness.

Even when a character like Apple approaches annoyance with consistently overstated zeal and wide-eyed perkiness, actress Laurence Leboeuf works her magic through the infectious sweetness of cotton candy-colored hair and her “Jem and the Holograms” swagger.  Despite intentional irreverence and rampant raucousness, the tone never spins out of hand.  “Turbo Kid” always reserves an uncanny ability to summon a spell that returns fun to the forefront whenever the needle pings close towards wearing out its welcome.

Masterminded by the creative trio collectively known as RKSS, “Turbo Kid” is the kind of crowd-pleaser that had it been made 30 years ago, it would be playing for enthusiastic revival theater crowds somewhere in the world at least once every weekend, and its creators would be long since burned out on 12am Q&A’s with fawning fanatics.  As a love letter to everything gruesome, gleeful, and glorious about 1980s genre movies and popular culture, “Turbo Kid” is nevertheless engineered specifically for maximum midnight movie madness, and it delivers by the megaton.

Review Score:  90

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