Things I Learned From Movie X: Torque

By Edwin Davies

May 4, 2011

C'mon, you know it's hotter when two the people in a threesome are scuzzy.

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Even though it happens only halfway into the film, Torque's philosophy of making everything into a chase reaches its climax with a moment in which Trey and Ford drive up a ramp and land on a top of a moving train, which they continue to drive along at insanely high speeds. If that wasn't cool enough, Ford at one point drops down between two of the carriages, uses his bike as a battering ram (this moment doesn't bear too much thinking about because the forces and movement involved may require us to rewrite everything we currently believe about physics) then proceeds to drive through the train, almost certainly crushing some of the passengers beneath his wheels. (The film doesn't show this, but I've been on enough trains to know that no one is going to move out of your way, motorbike or not.)

If anyone needed proof that trains are the most thoroughly badass form of transport, that scene stands as Exhibits A through Z. You couldn't drive a motorbike on top of a moving plane or a car, only trains present the perfect combination of size, speed and energy efficiency that the busy biker on the run requires. Also, the snack carts tend to be pretty well stocked these days.

You don't need no book learnin'

I'm a pretty smart guy. I'm not bragging when I say that (and if I am, I am terrible at bragging), it's just something that is a part of who I am. I studied hard, did well at school and went to a fairly good University. ("Fairly good?" Does my braggadocio know no bounds?) Despite this, I sometimes doubt my intelligence. This is partly because, of my close circle of friends, I am one of the few who isn't doing a highly specialized PhD in an obscure and impenetrable area of the sciences, but also because I occasionally do things that are incredibly dumb.




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For example, when I go shopping for birthday presents, I tend to use my phone to record anything good that I see. I'll write a quick text message with all the relevant information, then send the text to my own number so that I can consult it later. I did this the other day and, as soon as my phone vibrated to indicate that I had a text, I thought, "Oh, I wonder who this could be?" That's right; I was surprised by a text message that I had sent to myself. I am an idiot. If anyone ever tells you that a liberal arts education prepares you for the real world, tell them my story. Then punch them in the solar plexus. Only if they are a man, though, because as we all know, violence is only hilarious when it's aimed against men. That's why you never hear about The Marx Sisters and the Three Stoogesses, two of the most depressingly violent and ill-advised attempts at brand extension that didn't feature the words "Police Academy."

Now, I won't ever have to feel inadequate again, and neither will you, because whatever we do in life, we can never be dumber than Torque. This is for one simple reason; none of us will never say anything as facepalm-inducingly moronic as the line, spoken by Ford, "I live my life one quarter-mile at a time." Just think about that line. It's almost Zen in its idiocy. I tried thinking about it the other day, lapsed into a transcendental meditation state and ended up having a conversation with The Earth. (It says 'Sup?, by the way.) Some say that Death is the great leveler, others "sitting", but those people have not encountered Torque, and they are poorer for it.


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