Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Tracers Blu-ray Movie Review

The runner stumbles.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 8, 2015

It used to be cabs and their drivers that you needed to be afraid of in the wild and wooly concrete canyons of Manhattan, and ironically the fear was typically only amped up if you were inside the taxi yourself. Anyone who has survived a bumper car experience getting ferried around town in New York City will know the helpless feeling of watching near misses (and, frankly, more than a few hits) pass by as an intense driver whisks his passenger to a hopefully achievable destination. Pedestrians in New York have become so accustomed to the darting to and fro of any given taxi that they’ve developed a more or less instinctual response to the yellow vehicles, typically giving them wide enough berth that if there were a sudden lane change (or even an incursion onto the sidewalk, something I’ve personally seen happen), death (or debilitating injury) would not be the inevitable result. All of that “training” for the Big Apple’s populace may now need to be transported away from motor vehicles and aimed more squarely at the bicycle riding hordes which have overtaken Manhattan over the past several years. New York has always had bike messengers (at least as far back as I can remember, anyway), but they tended to be lone soldiers in a battle fought mostly on the mean streets with gas guzzling cars and trucks. Now downtown streets are often filled with bike riders, both “civilians” opting for a supposedly “easier” commute and/or more ecologically friendly one, and “professionals” who are ferrying important documents or other ephemera from one locale to the next, darting in and out of traffic in an often frightening display of bravado. While Tracers' focal hero Cam (Taylor Lautner) is indeed a bike messenger with such proclivities well on display, both the film and Cam ultimately give way to parkour, as if to put wary Manhattanites on notice that both cabs and bikes have, sadly, become passé and that there’s a new threat in town.

The film opens with some exciting intercutting between segments showing Cam tooling around the insane streets of New York City while simultaneously a gaggle of parkour enthusiasts is taking to the Big Apple’s roofs, alleyways and any available structure which will support their apparent desire to flaunt the laws of physics. Ultimately these two sets of “travelers” collide—literally, when a pretty young girl named Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos) misjudges one of her landings, plopping down right in front of a (yes, you guessed it) taxi cab, which has to avert her by slamming on its brakes, thereby sending Cam smashing into it, with the result being one of the more probably painful “meet cutes” in recent film. Unfortunately the accident does in Cam’s bike, and it soon becomes apparent that this sad state of affairs couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the young man is in rather desperate economic straits, having gotten into serious debt by trying to help a sick family member.

In just the first of several elisions which just kind of happen and need to be accepted at face value (despite any expository segueing information), Nikki provides Cam with a new bike, while Cam becomes intrigues with Nikki’s obvious parkour charms. It turns out she’s part of a parkour gang which is involved in illegal activity which nets attractively handsome paydays. Needless to say, Cam sees an ability to kill two birds with one stone if he can get his parkour chops to a point where he can join the crew—first, he’ll finally have money to pay off his debts and get out from under the menacing finger of loan sharks, and, second, he’ll get the chance to get to know Nikki better. It turns out the first part of that formula might be easier than the second,as Nikki is already involved with the parkour gang’s leader, a not exactly welcoming sort named Miller (Adam Rayner).

From a purely technical level, Tracers is something of a marvel, and those who wonder “how they did that” will have plenty to chew on as the film unfolds. That may at least provide a bit of distraction for the moments when Cam, Nikki and the rest of the “tracers” aren’t leaping over tall buildings with a single bound, for the minute those sequences end, Tracers comes plummeting to earth—hard. A comically large coterie of writers still couldn’t come up with reasonable dialogue scenes to fill the time in between the action set pieces, and things aren’t helped by an almost catatonic performance by Lautner, one which is all the more mind bogglingly dull when compared to the truly amazing work Lautner does on the stunt end of things (it’s more than apparent that the young erstwhile werewolf is not being doubled).

If the plot mechanics are beyond creaky (and never really make a whole whale of a lot of sense when you get right down to it), director Daniel Benmayor mounts a physically impressive production which captures the freewheeling escapades of the parkour crew with sometimes alarming intensity. While there’s the requisite “shaky cam” well on display in most of these sequences, the sheer audacity of both the parkour choreography and the sheer technical expertise to capture it all so briskly as it unfolds is Tracers’ chief calling card. Unfortunately there’s little to no trace of a believable plot or compelling characters in Tracers.

Tracers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tracers is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Shot digitally with Red Epic cameras, despite the constant use of "jiggly cam" and similar techniques, things look commendably sharp and well detailed throughout the bulk of this presentation. If you were to fast forward through the film (something I wouldn't necessarily argue against, as it will at least prevent you from having to hear the risible dialogue), the bifurcated color grading scheme employed by director Benmayor and cinematographer Nelson Cragg becomes readily apparent: in what almost might be thought of as a cinematic checkerboard effect, a yellow tinged sequence will give way to a blue tinged one, and so on and so on, alternating back and forth for much of the film's running time. (See screenshots 14 and 17 for some yellowish shots, and many of the rest of the screencaptures accompanying this review for the blue tinted ones.) Despite these (by now pretty tired) color grading techniques, detail and fine detail remain well resolved, sharp and precise looking, albeit within the context of visual imprecision caused by handheld cameras darting to and fro. Close-ups often reveal excellent levels of fine detail. The film segues through a large variety of lighting conditions and there's a slight lack of shadow detail in some of the darkest moments, though this is relatively minimal and does not ever devolve into total crush (see screenshot 14 again and look at the fine delineation between the black t-shirt and surrounding darkness). There are no issues with image instability and no problems with compression artifacts.

Tracers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tracers' well rendered and involving DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio provides near constant immersion, including everything from the bustling traffic noises of Manhattan to the pitter patter of little (?) feet scurrying across rooftops and over various objets d'art. At times just slightly crowded feeling, there's still excellent prioritization on hand and excellent attention to detail in spatial placement of sound effects. Dialogue (such as it is) is presented clearly and cleanly. Fidelity is top notch and dynamic range is very wide in this problem free track.

Tracers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Art of Motion: The Making of Tracers (1080p; 11:13) is an above average featurette which provides some fun looks at preparations for filming of the action sequences.


• Director's Pitch Reel (1080p; 2:25)

Tracers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You can run but you can't hide from the fact that a film needs to be more than just a series of well executed stunt scenes linked by feeble attempts to actually come up with a story to support them. Lautner's acting performance here is largely lamentable, but his action and stunt chops are first rate. Tracers is a kind of chaotic mess overall, but those who like exciting parkour sequences and Lautner diehards may well want to check this out. Technical merits are very strong for those considering a purchase.