Speed of Life

I don't know what else to make of this movie, another young-kid-can't-get-a-break flick, a kind of anti-coming of age story. Speed of Life features Drew (Caan) trying to care for dad, stricken with Alzheimer's. He's also enamored with a girl named Sarah (Mia Kirshner), a random street hussy who gets off on shooting guns, doing drugs, and having wild sex (as long as she is not required to get naked). Another friend is just trouble. And poor Drew just doesn't know what to do.

Coincidentally enough, I just saw a strikingly similar film called Floating, which features a wayward kid and a crippled father and a messed-up bunch of relationships. Floating, while equally slow, is actually pretty good, doing a good job of getting inside the head of its main character. Speed of Life doesn't get inside the head of anything, using fast motorcycles and inappropriate scenes of violence as a substitute for character development. That might work in a Steven Seagal movie, but it sure doesn't work in a character study like this.

I like Caan and I like Kirshner, but here there talents are wasted. Writer/director Rob Schmidt (Crime + Punishment in Suburbia) may have a story he wants to tell, but it just isn't coming out well here.

Aka Saturn. (And that took some doing to figure out, lemme tell ya.)