Movie Review: 'Tracers'

This teenage thriller sheds light on the charm of parkouring - an athletically demanding obstacle circuit sport, describes Kavish Chetty

Taylor Lautner is that guy you sometimes see on Twilight posters, a young man of the same generation as Justin Bieber, and much adored Tumblr-object of a legion of adolescent girls. Here he is given a starring role in a sleek, teenage thriller, for which he has grown a thin-bristled moustache, perhaps trying to obscure the smooth upper lip of boy-next-door-dom with which he is associated.

Lautner weaves through a pulsing New York City as Cam, a bicycle-riding messenger whose routes lead him on kinetic bursts and aerial short-cuts through the unpredictable urban sprawl. One afternoon he literally crashes face-first into his romantic interest (Marie Avgeropoulos) and they share a voluptuous moment of artificial sexual tension.

Soon, he is seduced into the split-second world of parkour (which, I guess, you could call a kind of supercharged sport in which you run rapidly through a complex urban circuit, negotiating all obstacles with virtuoso athletic moves).

Some criminal tensions develop, but the real attraction is the superbly-choreographed spectacles of parkour, bursting with suicidal velocity across abandoned oil rigs, scaling rooftops.

The dialogue and the low-slung streetwise posture of these young thugs is a bit comic, and you will have to forgive a lot of teenage-level drama, but the half-flying and vertigo of the parkour stunts have their own charms.

Our verdict: 2/5 stars