Racing Films

According to Wikipedia the director of this film, Michael Dweck, (born September 26, 1957) is an American visual artist and filmmaker who started working on this film in 2007. Best known for his narrative photography, Dweck's work "explores ongoing struggles between identity and adaptation in endangered societal enclaves.”  This film focuses on the endangered social enclave of people associated with the last remaining speedway on Long Island.

Perhaps the title of this film, ‘The Last Race’ is a bit of a spoiler in itself, something or someone is coming to the end and this film sets out to let you know how much of a loss to the world this is going to be.  The film is set at Riverhead Raceway, a stockcar track on Long Island.  In the opening credits the film notes that stockcar racing on Long Island started in 1927.  Then enter the nemesis of the stock car track, The shopping mall.  This is the films main premise, stock car track v shopping mall in a battle to the death where only one will survive.  The shopping mall is relentless, first appearing on long island in 1956 it has been devouring racetracks and, possibly also the people who attend them ever since.  This sounds like an excellent plot premise for a Stephen King novel…I hope he writes that novel one day.  Sadly, in this case, it is apparent from the start that the good guys probably aren’t going to win, the appetite of the shopping mall is now an unstoppable force.

Drama / horror aside this film is confused, I have a feeling the director wanted to create a pretty film but the attempts to do this don’t highlight the films best feature, it’s characters.  The grim and austere environment of an empty stockcar track can only be brought to life the by the roar of engines, the colour of panels and the sounds of mental crunching metal.  The film tries to convey the beauty of this to the viewer with a background of A LOT of classical music, just to add drama. This results in long pointless, speechless segments of cars cruising to music, a driver putting on his helmet to music, an angry driver staring a brawl to music and in car racing scenes to music.  To break up the music montages there is also lots of silence, a shot of the sky and cables with silence, a shot of the empty racetrack with silence, a field with some cars and silence, flags in the breeze with silence and guys sweeping the track in silence. 

There is fuck all dialogue, which was the one thing I was craving, I wanted to know more about the people in this film, how they came to racing, what they do for day jobs and what were their greatest triumphs or failures?  

In terms of the characters we  do get to see a little bit about; there’s a young guy called Jack Henley Jnr who just might have some real racing talent, a minister called Scott Kraniak who is racing for Jesus, a slightly mad bloke who seems to go stock car racing in between tending to a lovely garden at his home,  and we get a very short look into the life of an exterminator guy who’s day job is to take out wasp nests.  In the short segments about him there is about as much time dedicated to his story as there is a long sequence of a struggling wasp dying slowly. So much character exploring potential here, all wasted.

The one guy we do find a little bit more about is a feisty character called Crazy Eddie Mistretta who seems to have a Nikita Mazepin level road rage problem, no doubt this curtailed any chance of a professional racing career.  We get to see his house, meet is wife and see an old video from 2006 where he won a race. He brings us some great lines like, “The fucken asshole in the 71 dove down in front of me”. In his modest real world house he has lots of trophies and a lovely wife.  Apparently according to Crazy Eddie he’s recently been called out of retirement and we get some entertaining dialogue with his wife trying to talk him out of it by pointing out all his health problems.  But this is about as in depth as it gets with the characters. 

Most of all, we find out almost nothing about the film’s main protagonists, the racetrack owners Barbara and Jim Cromarty.  I’d love to know more about how these two came to own a racetrack in the first place, how did they meet and hear some more of their stories about times at the track.  All we get to know is that their life is in decline, health failing, age catching up on them, they really have no choice but to sell the incredible goldmine of land their racetrack is occupying.

All an all this story made me sad, not so much about the loss of a Long Island racetrack but more about the missed opportunity to find out more about the wonderful people who kept the track going for so long.  Perhaps I'm not the only person who feels this way as the film pulled in a modest $11,947 at the box office.  A quarter of this coming on opening weekend.  If we price cinema tickets at $10 that means approximately 1200 people probably felt as deflated as I did after watching this.   

To cheer up those 1200 people I have some good news! There was one final twist to the tale.  Whether it was a result of the film being made or not is unclear but Riverside raceway is still going!  It survived the onslaught of the ever greedy all consuming shopping mall development and is now in the hands of new owners who have given the place a new lease on life.  In 2015 the track was sold to Ed and Connie Partridge who also own a trucking business and intend to keep the racetrack running.  This was the type of offer the Cromarty’s had been holding out for, someone who had the desire and wherewithal to keep the track going into the future.  Also the Cromarty's pocketed a nice $4 million from the deal, enough money to fund at least three more nights in a US hospital.

The irony of all of this is that the race track was sold in 2015 but this film outlining the threat to the racetrack was only released in 2018.  This timing essentially makes the point of the film pointless, the racetrack had already been saved, the Last Race was not the last race at all and Riverhead raceway and all the people who connect with it are thriving.  This is the type of problem that can arise when it takes 11 years to complete a film project, the main premise of the film is no longer relevant, and as Enzo Ferrari once said “What’s behind you doesn’t matter”.