Six months ago, ace biker Cary Ford (Henderson) left town to escape tenacious FBI agent McPherson (Adam Scott) and a shipment of dodgy motorcycles containing $1 million in crystal meth, belonging to ruthless gang leader Henry (Matt Schulze).

Now, Cary returns to his close-knit hometown, where he hopes to reunite with his girlfriend Shane (Mazur) and his loyal buddies Dalton (Jay Hernandez) and Val (Will Yun Lee).

He rides into a whole heap of trouble.

Henry and his biker posse track down Cary and demand the return of the missing drugs.

When Cary refuses, Henry kills Junior (Starr), brother of Reaper gang leader Trey (Ice Cube), and frames Cary for the heinous crime. Trey swears bloody revenge and commands his Reaper gang to kill Cary and his friends, using any means necessary.

Cary, Shane and co are forced on the run for their life, with the Reaper clan, agent McPherson and his ballsy partner agent Henderson (Justina Machado) in hot pursuit.

Caught in a race against time to prove his innocence, Cary must rely on the courage of his friends and his expertise on two wheels to unmask Henry as the real killer.

Joseph Kahn's noisy action-thriller hits the skids almost from the word go with its preposterous screenplay, laughable dialogue and wooden performances.

Torque is 200cc short of plausible, sacrificing logic in its quest to emulate and possibly exceed the high-speed thrills of The Fast And The Furious and its ilk.

Kahn turbo-charges each action sequence with flashy camerawork and snappy editing to get our adrenaline pumping.

Unfortunately, so many of the set-pieces rely heavily on computer trickery particularly the final showdown, a duel on two wheels at 200mph that it's hard to feel even remotely excited.

A little more realism and less slam-bang pyrotechnics wouldn't go amiss.

And the continual use of slow motion sits uncomfortably in a film about the need for speed.

Henderson plays his impossibly shiny-toothed hero as a wise-cracking surfer dude in leathers while Ice Cube adopts a permanent sneer which causes him to twitch rather amusingly in close-up.

The female co-stars are reduced to scantily clad "bitches", whose sole purpose seems to be to service their men.

Torque is a teenage male fantasy writ large and loud.

OUT! rating: 3 out of 10

Film writer Stephen Webb reviews TORQUE

Starring: Martin Henderson,

Ice Cube, Monet Mazur,

Max Beesley, Fredro Starr

Director: Joseph Kahn

Certificate: 15

Running time: 84 mins

Showing from today at:

UGC and Cineworld, Swindon