No Surrender Cinema: GTMax (2024)
A high-octane heist flick featuring tricked out vehicles and a focus on family…sound familiar? Unfortunately, it’s not what you think it is, because there’s no Diesel, Statham, or Cena here. What we’ve got is a set of siblings caught up with a gang of thieves, with only each other and their motorbike racing skills to rely on. Will this family make it to the finish line alive? How many more racing puns will I come up with in this article? Read to to find out, as No Surrender Cinema hits the Netflix queue for a look at GTMax!
SPOILER ALERT: Since GTMax is a fairly new release, I’ll do my best to keep spoilers light. Read on at your own risk!
Typically when I’m looking for content to cover, Tubi is my favorite app to scroll through; it’s always been consistent with having so many of my favorites, from Cannon classics to the upper echelon of video store era releases. It’s also how I manage to unearth hidden gems like Barry “The Man” Chan’s star turn in Mean Streets of Kung Fu. This time around, it was my partner in film-covering crime Chris The Brain who said to me “Hey Toyman, maybe you should give the action selection on Netflix a shot”, and so here we are. Truth be told, Netflix is not an app I go to all that often, as I’m content with the overwhelming amount of content that Tubi and Pluto TV provide, not to mention my own physical media collection. Still, it comes in handy when I want to go back and binge Prison Break again, or watch one of my favorite entries from the Sniper series. I suppose a little variety in my watching habits couldn’t hurt, especially since this recent release (having dropped on Netflix at the end of 2024) seemed to share more than a few qualities with the Fast franchise, a franchise I have a great affinity for.
GTMax starts off with a robbery in progress, or at least it’s the aftermath; a group of unknown riders, their faces hidden under their helmets, are being chased through the streets of France by a bunch of motorcycle cops. It’s a brief bit of action that I assume is there to tease the tone of the film, but the beginning of the film proper jumps to this film’s version of the Helltrack from Rad. It’s here where we are introduced to the Carella family; siblings Soelie and Michael and their father, the track owner Daniel. Michael is the one trying to live up to the family name, while Soelie is adamant about not getting back on a bike. We learn from the ensuing fallout from Michael’s loss that the family finances are nearly gone, and Daniel’s wife (the kids’ mother) died of cancer in recent years. This dark cloud hanging over the Carella’s has caused tension amongst them all, with Daniel lashing out at his son for being a loser, Michael telling his father he wished that he (Daniel), not their mom, died of cancer, and Soelie desperately trying to put the pieces of her fractured family back together. It’s this noble gesture that ends up putting her in the crosshairs of gang leader Elyas, who brings Michael on as a member of his crew, with a suspicious Soelie standing firm that she will be by Michael’s side as his mechanic.
GTMax hits all the obvious notes; Soelie works on making Michael a better rider, even if they both know they have to keep their eyes on Elyas and his right hand man, Theo. The siblings are reluctant to be a part of the crew, feeling that it’s their only chance to get their father out of the hole he’s put himself in. Theo and Soelie exchange fleeting glances, and start to bond; this is how we come to find out what happened that make Soelie swear off riding for good. On top of all that, there’s a detective (spotted in the first scene) who is trying to unravel who these high-speed hijackers are. At one point, he gets a little too close thanks to a talkative member of the crew, but said member ends up on the wrong end of a bullet that will be attributed to Michael, lest he decide to back out of Elyas’ latest heist. If you’ve been paying attention up to this point, you’ll know that surely Soelie is going to have to step up to protect her brother, even if it means putting on a helmet and resuming her racing ways.
After sitting back and watching this movie, I can say one thing is certain: the “Max” in GTMax definitely does not come from maximum effort. I’m sorry to say so, but 90% of this film was a chore to get through. The opening scene showed a lot of promise, but then we delved deep into family drama and getting to know the gang, trading any sense of impending danger for what felt like never-ending dialogue. It’s as if the movie is nothing more than one long conversation, bookended by two segments of action. Director Olivier Schneider was actually a stunt coordinator and fight coordinator on several of the Fast & Furious films, so you would think that the experience would have given him an idea on how his own film should flow. For every speech about family that Vin Diesel gives, we get at least five exploding cars and characters hanging from high places; in GTMax every family conversation is followed by a gang conversation, which is followed by a police conversation. Maybe the GT stands for “Go Talk”?
It was far from the worst film I’ve ever seen, but this is not one that I found any reason to revisit in the future. In fact, I’m adding another F to this Triple F (French Fast & Furious) for failing to entertain me. There are plenty of ways to take an overdone premise and keep it interesting, but Schneider was unable to even do what works well on the very films that he himself has been a part of. If you see Netflix suggesting this one to you, skip it and save yourself the boredom.
