Alabama Dirt Movie Review [No Spoilers]
No spoilers by me however you might want to move on if you really want to watch this movie and haven't done so yet.
Set in the stereotypical hardscrabble redneckism that is dirt track racing, this movie never really takes the green flag.
Director Tom Stout's 5-year gap in the director's chair is immediately front-n-center. It's almost as if he has zero clue to what this movie should be. Perhaps he acknowledged that there's safety in numbers that no good dirt racing has ever been made and likely will ever be.
Look, I gave credence to this project being a (very) low budget indie film. As a studied viewer of indie (usually short) films, it's completely acceptable to whiff on one or more components of a film but usually one layer will rise above the muck be it artistic ideas or creativeness, possibly the dialogue, maybe the script or good production value. Alabama Dirt had none of thee above.
http://i.imgur.com/4wEjv2A.png
Besides daisey dukes, spaghetti strap shirts and sundresses filled with wholesome southern girls, we do acquire a car, a star, a villain, a cute chick and a host of other human moving parts but threaded in between all this character development, the director falls to give us much racing or mechanization a movie of this caliber deserves.
http://i.imgur.com/yRkvKXP.png
Oh yeah, you gotta have the cool factor. Taking a Super Stock out on the highway is cool. Pointless, but cool. It did look good on film, tho.
http://i.imgur.com/p2yeXkl.png
Well if you're going to put a wink in your movie, casting this young lady wasn't wrong. Oh you think I posted this picture for horn-doggin', well she's got the looks but she was the only person in the entire film that could act. Period. Expect to see her star rise.
http://i.imgur.com/h496JXn.png
Ok, to break it down in one last paragraph, here we go: The script was absolutely horrible. The plot, predictable and just plain unoriginal. The dialogue, 98% was painful to listen to, it was like the star was using an earpiece and his director was reading the lines into his ears. No snap, no rhythm, no flow. Dry and canned. Racing jargon was absent, largely. Totally disappointed this movie had no promotional value whatsoever to our sport.
Rating: Black Flag. I didn't think I'd find a movie worse than The Accountant this soon but what's even more depressing is Alabama Dirt set us up for sequel. I can't even imagine...
Kudos to Deep South Speedway for letting us see your beautiful highbanks. It was the best part of the movie!
