Watching Lost

Photo: Matthew Fox arrives at Speed Racer premiere

How did Matthew Fox’s latest film do after it opened in theaters this weekend? It failed to crush down Iron Man, and received mixed reviews. I’ve rounded up some it:

Chicago Metromix

• “Speed Racerâ€? bemoans corporately financed entertainment for the masses while serving as a fine example thereof. So as big, blaring blockbusters go, it’s a bit of a hypocrite. It is also self-congratulatory. When Susan Sarandon’s Mom Racer (think Jane Jetson without the pre-feminist itch to shop) tells her son, Speed, played by Emile Hirsch, that what he does may be machine-driven but it’s “artâ€? that “takes my breath away,â€? the whap-whap-whap you hear isn’t a blown tire, it’s brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski patting themselves on the back. But “Speed Racerâ€? doesn’t look like any other movie. At its best, it’s buoyant pop entertainment focused on three things: speed, racing and retina-splitting oceans of digitally captured color. The Wachowskis’ first project as writers-directors since their “Matrixâ€? trilogy resembles the aftermath of a big box of Dots flung at the world’s largest set of Fiesta dinnerware. The palette makes Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracyâ€? look like “Stranger Than Paradise.â€?

Time Magazine

• Like the Downey film, Speed Racer is plenty satisfying in traditional action-movie terms. It boasts enough auto-erotic car-nage to make Grand Theft Auto IV seem, by comparison, like a junkyard jalopy. Beyond that, there’s the edifying display of people taking control of their own destinies by building beautiful, useful machines. The heroes of Speed Racer and Iron Man could be the garage geeks who paved Silicon Valley with cybergold; or Hollywood’s visual-effects alchemists, translating their fantasies into pixels to create gorgeous movies like these. Iron Man and Speed Racer are tributes to practical ingenuity and manual dexterity, to real American innovators like Edison and Ford, Steve Wozniak and Dale Earnhardt — to the grease monkey as genius.

Premiere

• It’s during this weird, beyond-frenetic desert-to-ice-capped-peaks race sequence that the picture’s defining scene occurs. After multiple double-crosses including ninja attacks and faked identities bring the intrigues to a boil, the good and bad factions, in all their motley eye-popping glory, face off in a fight involving guns, fists, martial arts kicks and chops, and, alas, chimp feces. Except there’s no action per se. The various characters strike, and freeze, in heroic poses. The camera revolves around them, and they look totally, like, awesome and iconic and, well, heroic. Then there’s a sound effect, or a bunch of sound effects, and maybe a depiction of a single blow or shot. The chimp feces aren’t thrown, but we see them on the face of one of the more unctuous baddies. And so on. It’s entirely ridiculous, and it is presented to the audience as if it is what is actually happening, that is, this is the way that Speed and his family and allied are putting down the bad guys.