Before there were exploding heads, before there were pulsating televisions and fly-human hybrids vomiting on their breakfast, David Cronenberg made Fast Company—a movie so aggressively generic and un-Cronenbergian that it feels like it was directed by a guy who lost a bet at a Jiffy Lube. It’s the forgotten black sheep of Cronenberg’s early career, a drag-racing flick so straight-laced and testosterone-lobotomized, you keep waiting for someone to sprout a tumor or melt into their own steering wheel. Spoiler: nobody does.
Let’s set the scene: It’s 1979, and Cronenberg—Canada’s creepy little brother to Kubrick—decides to take a break from sexual parasites (Shivers), armpit-needled nymphomaniacs (Rabid), and cerebral horror to make… a movie about corporate-sponsored drag racers? It’s like if David Lynch stopped making Eraserhead to direct a Dukes of Hazzardreboot. There’s nothing here. No body horror. No grotesque sexual undertones. Just a bunch of men with bad sideburns talking about engine blocks like they’re Shakespearean monologues.
The film centers around Lonnie “Lucky Man” Johnson (played by B-movie rectangle William Smith), a veteran drag racer for the FastCo oil company who finds himself at odds with his slimy sponsor rep, Phil Adamson (John Saxon, collecting a paycheck between horror gigs). The plot, such as it is, involves Lonnie being ousted in favor of a flashier driver, his rebellious stand against corporate greed, and an eventual return to the racetrack to prove that man and machine still mean something in this sellout world.
Look, I get it. It’s supposed to be about integrity. About sticking it to “the man.” But Cronenberg—David freaking Cronenberg—turning in a script where the villain is literally an oil executive who doesn’t love racing enough is like Picasso painting a stick figure on a Waffle House napkin. You keep waiting for the twist, the mutation, the sense of dread lurking in the carburetor. Instead, you get long stretches of guys polishing hoods, revving engines, and delivering exposition with all the subtlety of a tire iron to the teeth.
The racing scenes, you ask? About as thrilling as a DMV appointment. Sure, there are some decent shots of dragsters tearing down the track, but they’re cut together like a high school AV club trying to capture the magic of Smokey and the Bandit. It’s all sizzle and no stake. Cars go fast. People cheer. Cronenberg, bless his diseased little heart, tries to make it kinetic, but the editing has all the rhythm of a cement mixer rolling downhill. If you’ve seen one burnout, you’ve seen them all. Fast Company gives you ten.
But the real flat tire here is the script. Dialogue in Fast Company is so wooden it gives termites indigestion. Every conversation is a testosterone-soaked cliché that sounds like it was translated from English to grease monkey and back again. “This ain’t about the money—it’s about respect!” someone growls. Another guy says, “We build these cars with our souls, not just our hands.” It’s like Glengarry Glen Ross if all the characters were exhaust fumes and discarded beer cans.
And the characters? Let’s call them what they are: walking mustaches. Lonnie is your typical aging rebel, a good ol’ boy with a heart of nitro and a jaw carved from granite. His rival, Billy “The Kid” Brooker, is a younger, flashier driver who looks like he moonlights as a lounge singer when he’s not shifting gears. The female characters—what few there are—exist entirely to either smooch, worry, or conveniently disrobe. Claudia Jennings, in one of her last roles before her tragic death, plays Lonnie’s love interest with all the depth of a pin-up poster and all the agency of a pit stop. She’s beautiful, yes—but her main contribution is looking concerned and occasionally providing a soft-focus distraction from the dull roar of engines and testosterone.
Now, let’s talk tone. Fast Company doesn’t know if it wants to be a character drama, a sports movie, or a corporate takedown fantasy. It dips a toe into each genre, but never commits to anything. It’s got the pacing of a beer commercial and the emotional weight of a tire rotation. It’s Cronenberg’s most impersonal, least ambitious work—and it shows. There’s no tension, no sense of dread, no signature weirdness. It’s like watching your favorite heavy metal singer do a cover of a Jimmy Buffett song. Something’s broken. Something’s sad.
Even John Saxon—usually reliable as a slimy antagonist—seems confused about why he’s here. He delivers every line like he’s waiting for the real script to arrive. At one point, his character tries to sabotage Lonnie’s car by rigging it with explosives. You’d think that would at least deliver some pulpy fun. But the explosion is as anticlimactic as the rest of the movie. Boom. Smoke. Cut. More racing. Wake me when Cronenberg gets back to tumors.
To his credit, Cronenberg has gone on record admitting he took the job for money and car porn. He wanted to shoot fast cars, and dammit, he did. But the film feels like what it is: a hired-gun gig from a guy who should be operating on the psyche, not the pistons. There’s no subtext here. No fear of flesh. Just motor oil and soft rock guitar riffs. Fast Company is David Cronenberg’s cinematic equivalent of a midlife crisis—a shiny red muscle car with no soul under the hood.
Final Thoughts:
If you’re a gearhead with a VHS fetish, you might find some joy in Fast Company—but if you’re here for the visceral discomfort and cerebral decay of classic Cronenberg, this one’s a hard pass. It’s clean. It’s straight. It’s utterly devoid of the weird, erotic dread that makes Cronenberg, well… Cronenberg.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 flaming carburetors.
Watch it only if you’re curious what happens when the master of body horror takes a pit stop in mediocrity. Otherwise, keep your eyes on the road and drive right past this one.
