[CHARGE: ZERO EMISSIONS/MAXIMUM
SPEED screens Thursday May 23rd
at 7:30 pm at the Capitol Theatre.]
Review by Bob
Ignizio
The Isle of Man TT bike race is a
thrilling competition in which cyclists zip along public roads at
high speed. Death is a very real possibility for the incautious or
unlucky racer. Now add in to the mix bikes that are largely untested
experimental vehicles designed to run on battery power instead of
gasoline, and things can get even more interesting. At least that's
the idea behind Mark Neale's documentary film CHARGE: ZERO
EMISSIONS/MAXIMUM SPEED. And
for the most part, that's how the film plays out.
Several
teams of engineers from around the world converged on the Isle of Man
in 2009 for the first ever zero emissions race. CHARGE
spends most of its time focusing on American bike designer Michael
Cyzsz and the British eccentric/genius Cedric Lynch, inventor of the
Agni motor that most of the racers in the film use. Lynch is the kind
of character who could probably carry a whole film on his own.
There's plenty of drama in the Cyzsz camp as well, though. Despite
being the seeming favorites going in, the Cyzsz team's hopes start to
fade as they become a classic example of Murphy's Law (“everything
that can go wrong, will go wrong”).
