Snake and Mongoose (2013) Directed by Wayne Holloway

Here is a race movie that most definitely won't get your adrenaline pumping!

Well, drag racing isn't all that spectacular, fun and competitive to begin with in the first place, in my opinion. It's literally over within seconds and all the drivers have to do is punch in the gas and drive in a straight line. There of course is far more too it but my point is that it looks like a very simplistic sport, in which the fastest car always wins and not necessarily the best driver as well. It's not really anything exciting or tense, so of course the movie never works out as such either.

But oh well, you can say that the movie is more of biopic than an actual race movie. But also in that regard, this movie really isn't anything that solid. You basically learn very little about its two main characters and I still don't know what they were all about and what drove them, after having finished watching this movie. I mean, it's a pretty dangerous sport but that's never much of an issue for this movie or its characters. They are more concerned about getting sponsors and not as much about the dangers they continuously willingly put themselves in, again and again. The movie never touches upon any of the interesting or more emotional elements of the character's stories but just on their 'heroics' and how they changed the sports forever. It does still attempts to touch upon some more serious and dramatic themes at times but it always feels like an afterthought and secondary plot line for the movie, that really isn't all that important or even relevant to the main story of the movie.

There also definitely isn't ever a good flow to the story. It doesn't necessarily feels like the story is ever progressing and it basically feels like you're watching the same things happen, over and over again. It's also disappointing how this isn't really a movie about the rivalry between the two main characters. The way I see it; they are friends and even cooperate together to get bigger sponsors, make more money and build faster cars. If this was a movie supposes to be about the rivalry between the two then were was any of the rivalry?

So it's never building up toward anything with its story, which included all of its sport elements. It isn't building up toward one specific big or important race and every race in this movie feels basically the same and seems just as 'significant' as the other, at least to me it did. It really doesn't help much that this movie obviously had a low budget to spend, which especially shows during the racing moments. They never shot any actual races- or tries to create the illusion it did but it rather makes use of stock footage of real actual drag races. Sounds like an authentic thing to do but the only problem with it is that that movie is set during the '60's and '70's which means that it also uses archive footage from the '60's and '70's as well, which of course isn't the best picture quality to look at and also definitely isn't in tune with the rest of the movie. It never feels right and it most definitely doesn't work out as anything authentic or realistic for the movie.

It really isn't a very pleasant, fun, insightful or engaging movie to watch and it overall is a very flat and bland movie experience but it at least never becomes a truly terrible movie to watch as well. It isn't doing an awful lot and therefor also isn't doing an awful lot wrong but that clearly doesn't make this a very good movie as well though.

5/10

Watch trailer