REVIEW | Burn Out (2017)

Oh ho ho ho ho! C’est un
Vroom Vroom, Bang Bang — no?

In which Netflix boosts the two-wheel theatre with a French feature film.

Tony is a talented motorcycle racer with a warehouse worker’s salary, that aspires to compete at a professional level. When his girlfriend and their son get into trouble with drug-dealing gangsters, Tony dives into the criminal underworld and offers to clear her debt by transporting contraband across the city. Testing the limits of his professional, and survival skills.

*Minor spoilers for Burn Out ahead*

So to clear the air — Burn Out was released and premiered for French audiences in 2017, and only later distributed across the globe in 2019. Which makes it ‘kind of‘ new for the rest of the world, now that it’s commercially available on Netflix.

And with that out of the way, it’s time to address the crucial question of ‘which is more dangerous’ — riding bikes or smuggling drugs.

The answer here? Comes in the form of a tasteful, well-made foreign film that’s fit for motorcyclists and moviegoers alike. If you ask me, Burn Out is truly nothing short of a revolutionary renaissance for the two-wheel trafficking, motor-mule genre.

Here you have a very standard, very familiar, and very vanilla story about the reluctant hero, no-good gangsters, and money mixed with drugs.

Yet since the joy of bike riding is as simple as being out on the open roads with a roaring engine at your command. The thought of having a team of filmmakers dramatising the life of an aspiring motorcycle racer is more than enough reason to watch this movie.

All that’s really needed after that is a theatrical backdrop to give the fun-fuelled film some flavour. Not to mention the showcase of various Ducati Panigales* tearing up the tarmac.

*works of art that are absolutely worth the Google search.

And if you’re concerned about biker’s bias, you’ll know where you stand with this movie if you like Nicolas Winding Refn’s distinguished, auto-noir masterpiece — Drive (2011).

Since the parallels between the two are more prominent than Gosling’s dirt-biker bandit role in The Place Beyond the Pines (2012).

When it comes to big bikes on the big-screen — who could forget the corporate-heist opening in Tron: Legacy (2010), the highway scene from The Matrix: Reloaded (2003), and almost any motorcycle chase sequence in the Mission: Impossible film franchise? Among so many others, there’s just no denying that motorcycles leave an outstanding mark on movies.

And yes, that includes the bonkers bike-jitsu bits from John Woo.

Burn Out even goes the extra mile of appropriating the minutiae of motorcycling for cinema. Making it incredibly more accessible to even your motorcycle-hating relatives.

No need to talk about how many cylinders whichever bike has, what motorcycle chicken strips are, or even how their gearboxes works in the first place — down from Neutral to first, and up-two into second?

Have fun explaining that.

Plus, if you wanted diabolically detailed engine noises and regulation-riding — you could always go back to all those racing documentaries, moto-vlogs, and web reviews about riders with their motorcycles.

On top of all that, Burn Out also has the added bonus of being a foreign film. Namely, the level of class and ‘je ne sais quoi’ that covers every corner of the movie — from start to finish. And all just because it’s French (as ignorant and uncultured as that sounds).

Not to discredit the well-written dialogue, but the language gap somehow helps the other aspects of the film to stand out. Emphasising more on the moments, motivations, and [of course] motorcycling in every scene — just like storytelling without sound or colour.

And apart from the narrative, it’s also fantastically shot. Almost better than a clutch-dumping, crime-drama deserves to be.

From the camera angle to the lean angle. Burn Out succeeds in pairing its cinematography with the plot-delivery, by immersively strapping you in for every tactical track-day rush, and high-speed highway run.

Lovely stuff.

So long story short, I can confidently say that within 5-mins of this movie — most of you will feel the drive to sell your cars to buy a bike.

And above all else,
you’ll learn something that only regular riders would understand:

Which is that a biker always carries their helmet, even when it’s off their head. Or maybe that not all of us ride like road-rascals, but we do sometimes ride like we’re carrying contraband.

Now the next best thing after this, would be a motorcycle movie with a strong female lead — fingers crossed.