The film's poster attracted me to watching it. However, this misleading poster can be deemed false advertising. There's no truck being pursued by the cops. In fact, there's no truck being pursued by anyone and there are no chase sequences, as I had thought.
Martial arts superstar Donald 'Cowboy' Cerrone stars as Roy Mason, who has a history of being in trouble. When he owes mafia mob Julian (Quinton Jackson) a favour after losing a substantial amount on a fight, Julian offers Roy a chance to redeem himself (and pay his debt) by transporting $50 million worth of rare diamonds from Vegas to Baja. Julian also trusts him for the job because he is a professional and skilled truck driver.
Roy then asks his brother Danny (Chris Maher) to join him on the trip. And this was the moment I had high hopes for the movie. I anticipated a trucking movie in the vein of 'Smokey and the Bandit' or 'Convoy'. However - and there might be spoilers here - the truck is simply stolen whilst parked at a gas station. When Roy and Danny finally get to the truck again - left at the side of the road - they find the diamonds gone. And this was the last of the truck...
The antagonists are mob boss Julian, and Paulie (Weston Cage), who works for him. The film becomes a bit confusing when Paulie disclose towards the end that the land where the diamonds were found belonged to his family. If this was indeed the case, then how did Julian become the boss and how does he actually fit in the picture? Both these antagonists are very weak characters, and both equally badly acted by the respective actors. The dialogue was also very standard and I never viewed them as true villains.
When Roy and Danny's older brother Joe's family is kidnapped by Julian, the film becomes a rescue mission. This final act is so clichéd and sensational, and the final confrontation with Paulie was so badly done. In general, the film was not a bad effort and is watchable, but could have been so much better.
I thought Cerrone did a great job as Roy (he looks and sounds so much like Tom Hardy!), but the rest of the actors were not that great. On another positive note, the cinematography was good. The film also features some really good photography, but also bad photography at times. The editing was also inconsistent; good at times, and very bad at times. For me, the film was saved only by Cerrone.
