[This
contains spoilers, but it doesn’t really matter as the plot is so basic]
If
you ever thought that all you needed to make a film was a girl and a gun, a
specific demographic if ever there was one, Vehicle
19, which has both, may disabuse you of the notion. It is essential to have a decent story as
well. Vehicle 19 (2013) is the sort of film that shortly afterwards will
have you asking yourself, ‘now was that Vehicle
19 or 17 I watched the other day?’ The makers presumably chose a number above
ten in case filmgoers assumed it was a sequel, rather like the production-line Fast & Furious films with which the
late Paul Walker was largely associated.
Vehicle 19 was written and directed by South African Mukunda Michael Dewil, an
inexperienced filmmaker. The concept
must have seemed an interesting one on the drawing board: a thriller filmed
entirely within the confines of a car, showing the character arc of a flawed
individual caught up in an increasingly fraught situation who moves from frustrated
confusion, anger and fear, to determination to come through against the odds and
redeem himself. The claustrophobia
engendered by filming in a confined space is reminiscent of Phone Booth (2002), though in formal
terms, but not much else, Vehicle 19
has more in common with Abbas
Kiarostami’s Ten (also 2002).
Walker
plays Michael Woods, an ex-prisoner who breaks his parole in the United States
to fly to Johannesburg in order to see his estranged wife, now working at the city’s
American consulate. Having spoken to her
on the phone he knows that if he messes up once more it will be the end of
their relationship, her move to the other side of the Atlantic having given him
a hint. Unfortunately he has been allocated
the wrong hire vehicle by Hertz, a minivan rather than the saloon car he
requested, and as he tries to navigate the city’s traffic jams and tricky
youngsters he learns that he has collected much more than he bargained for.
The
first question you ask yourself after you and he realise that the van comes
complete with bound woman in the boot, then discover that she has been abducted
on behalf of corrupt police, is why would they leave a car with a gun and a
kidnap victim in a rental lot where a clerical error could assign it to the
wrong person. There must be simpler ways
of disposing of government officials who have stumbled on to their misdeeds.
The
second is, when later on we find Michael has no money, how he managed to rent
the car in the first place, or why he needed to when there must have been less
expensive public transport options available from the airport to the city
centre; it can’t be far, given that Michael tells his wife that he will be
there in twenty minutes, despite not having a clue where he is going or what
road conditions are like. It is
certainly a relief that when he hides from police in a car wash it doesn’t
require him to pay, as that could have been tricky.
In
an effort to ramp up the tension there is a pointless bit of business with his
mobile phone when, after some drama with his battery running out while making
an important call to the single trustworthy individual in the South African
judiciary, he gets out his charger and plugs it into the dashboard. The only problem caused by the crisis was an
interrupted call to the judge, which he is able to resume once he has got some
power in the phone. Why didn’t he just
plug the thing in earlier? It only takes
a moment.
Walker, the star in the
affordably-priced minivan, has a strikingly chiselled face reminiscent of a
young Henry Fonda, circa The Grapes of
Wrath (1940). He carries the film almost
single-handed (apart from the section where he first spars with and then teams
up with – once he realises they are in the same boat – his unexpected passenger,
ably played by Naim MacLean) and he makes a good job of portraying the rising
tension as Michael wonders how he can explain the bizarre state of affairs in
which he finds himself to a sceptical spouse all too ready to believe the worst
of him, while trying to work out what to do for the best. Unfortunately Walker is let down by the
underdeveloped script.
Of
course seeing Paul Walker drive will always now put the viewer in mind of the
manner of his death. If he is best known
for the Fast & Furious films, Vehicle 19 might be included as a more
sedate entry in the franchise as Michael spends most of his time lost in the
streets of Johannesburg, depicted as a kind of enormous South Los Angeles that
does the South African Tourist Board no favours, interspersed with bursts of
action. The strapline ‘He picked the
wrong car. They picked the wrong guy’
and advertising showing Michael holding a gun mis-sells the tone of the
film. This is not some kind of
Man-on-Fire revenge thriller, it is a fish-out-of-water tale of someone who realises
he can’t just walk away from the obligations that have been thrust upon him.
Despite
the happy ending to the adventure Michael must know that he has to face up to
his parole violation (sadly for him the United States and the Republic of South
Africa have an extradition treaty).
However, the film does not conclude with Michael, but with the titular
van. After all that mayhem, we discover
that Vehicle 19 was not written off even though it must have been a hell of a
mess. We see it back in the rental car park
waiting to be hired out again, with just a seat cover pulled on to hide a
bullet hole and unsightly blood stains.
The implausibility of the van being put back in the pool after all it
has been through seems to sum up the plot’s weaknesses. You wonder what a director with a more
developed script might have done with the concept of Michael on the run in a
strange land, and what Paul Walker would have achieved if he had been stretched
by better, uh, vehicles for his talent.
