“It’s like Jaws, but with piranha!”
“It’s like Jaws, but with a grizzly bear!”
“It’s like Jaws, but with a giant pig!”
“It’s like Jaws, but with a mutated grizzly bear!”
“It’s like Jaws, but with a bunch of fuckin’ bunnies!”
And a whole host of other things that are like Jaws, but with…
So with that out of the way, I’d like for you to picture, if you would, ladies and gentlemen, comma lovers of all ages, a man walking into the offices of a potential financier. He lays a screenplay, and perhaps a prototype poster, on the counter. And he says, “I have this idea for a movie. It’s like Walking Tall, but instead of a guy with a 2X4 killing the redneck bastards who messed with his family, it’s a guy with an armor-plated, flame-spewing, drill-tipped monster truck killing the redneck bastards who messed with his family.” Because we all know that an armor-plated, flame-spewing, drill-tipped monster truck is a whole fuck of a lot cooler than a 2X4, even if it is being carried by Joe Don Baker. Wait, even if it’s being carried by Joe Don Baker? How the hell does that make anything cooler? What am I, a Joe Don Baker fan? You guys watch Joe Don Baker movies? What the hell was I even talking about?
Oh yeah, rednecks being mutilated by a monster truck. So Tiny Doyle (Ned Beatty!) and his band of (presumably) inbred sons, whose retardation levels run from “mild” to “I’m a Republican”, run the small county of Hazzard (I am, of course, kidding). Also living in Hazzard County (no, not really!) are trucker Big Joe Rosso, his son Joey, and their family. I mean, not their family together as gay lovers who managed to biologically reproduce, but their family as in the characters of lesser importance. Doyle’s sons run the wife and daughters Rosso off the road one day, and get off with a mild smack on the wrist in court. After the Joes start a fight in Tiny’s bar, the sons drop cinder blocks on Big Joe’s rig, causing it to jackknife and kill Joe.
Doing what any grief-stricken son would do, Joey takes to the junkyard to build himself a giant, armor-plated vengeance machine during a music montage featuring a song by a band that makes Trooper sound like Napalm Death.
Starting small at first, to tease the bastards into admitting their crimes, he runs his truck through Tiny’s used car dealership until every car (and the office, for good measure) is flatter than an open beer left out overnight. When this doesn’t work, and the rednecks attempt to kill one of Joey’s friends, he takes to running over Doyles.
Swearing vengeance for the vengeance being taken out on them, using the I-can-pick-on-you-but-how-dare-you-retaliate logic that only a peaked-in-high-school dumbass can muster, the members of the Doyle clan that aren’t stuck between the lugs of Joey’s 6-foot tires decide to rape his girlfriend, Misty. Seriously, if someone is systematically killing your family with a custom-built homicidal monster truck because you fucked with them, would that really be a sign that you should continue to fuck with them, or would you take it to mean it was time to move to a different country? Congratulations, all those who answered “B” get to spend the rest of their lives not being scraped off various stretches of asphalt with a snow shovel.
In the end, it all comes down to Tiny, his eldest son, Vic, and Joey, plowing his truck through Tiny’s bar again and again and again until the whole building resembles…well…a building that’s been run over multiple times with a 10-ton fire-breathing vehicle designed with the sole purpose of devastation in mind. But what’s this? The Doyles have got Misty? But even that backfires, as Joey climbs out of Rolling Vengeance to rescue her, and Vic takes the wheel of the beastly vehicle, just in time for the local sheriff to show up and arrest him for all the vehicular man-squishing. Y’see, the sheriff knew all along it was Joey, but he hated the Doyles as much as anyone, probably more (excepting Joey, of course) since they operated in a way that never allowed him to bust them for anything illegal. Sort of a forerunner to Willem Dafoe’s character in Boondock Saints.
Good performances from a mostly no-name cast (and one purdy mouth – don’t blame me, as a theoretically humorous film critic, I’m actually contractually obliged to make a Deliverance joke wherever Ned Beatty is concerned), a solid script that, despite the events portrayed therein, manages to avoid being at all ridiculous, and of course, a really fuckin’ cool monster truck. You can’t ask for much more than that from your movie. I know I certainly don’t.
So there you have it. If you’re already sold on monster trucks being cool, you’re gonna dig this flick. If you’re already sold on inbred redneck assholes needing to be run over by a monster truck, you’re gonna dig this flick. If you’re not into revenge and monster trucks…well, if you’re not into revenge and monster trucks I really don’t think I want to be talking to you. We don’t see eye to eye. I may have to run you over with a monster truck. I wonder just how many times I said “run over with a monster truck” in the last two pages?
Walking Tall with a monster truck, and a marked improvement on the story if I do say so. Don’t get me wrong, Walking Tall was a damn good movie, but it didn’t have a monster truck. Everything is better with a monster truck. And bacon. Everything is better with a monster truck and bacon. And chocolate. And Godzilla. So, if this movie had Godzilla running over rednecks in a monster truck while eating chocolate-covered bacon, it would be the best movie ever. Think about that. Are you REALLY going to argue with me? I didn’t think so.
The Moral of the Story: If your entire family has been killed, and your girlfriend has been raped, a monster truck will make it all better.
H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating: 
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