Street racing is a vibes-based genre. There are no real rules, and we viewers don’t know the route. The only thing that matters is the feeling of speed, of explosive engines, screeching tires, and upshifting gears. Red Line (速命道, a half-pun on “fate”), Taiwanese Jacky Ko’s (柯有謙) feature debut, understands this completely, seemingly running on highly effective montage sequences and a heavy bass soundtrack alone. Wonder of wonders, it’s also a rom-com that’s actually romantic (written by Alan Kuo 柯有倫 and Chiu Bing Hao 邱炳豪).
Ever since Jay Chou’s (周杰倫) acting debut in Initial D (2005), based on the Japanese mountain road racing manga, street racing films have been an established film subgenre in Taiwan. Perhaps the popularity of these films has something to do with an abundance of mountain road street racers in Taiwan. Indeed, Red Line is shot in the Yangmingshan area in the north of Taipei, where on nights with good weather souped-up cars roar past on a weekly basis (near my window, no less). Red Line isn’t the first Taiwanese entry in the racing genre (that would be 2021’s Nezha 叱吒風雲, a clichéd but exciting stock car racing film also starring Chou, alongside his wife, Hannah Quinlivan 昆凌), but it’s the first street racing film.
