Bam! A bike messenger collides with a professional thief on the street in a mess of twisted steel and burning rubber. With his bicycle wrecked, Cam, played by Taylor Lautner, has lost his only means of earning money and paying off the 15 grand he owes the Chinese mob. That is, until the thieves invite him to join their fold – and their specialisation in parkour. For anyone who hasn’t watched an action movie within the last decade, parkour is the acrobatic art of moving through any manner of obstacles without stopping.
Despite some good use of gritty New York City locations, Tracers adds up to nothing more than a weak commercial for the practice in question. There’s zero innovation with the stunt-work here, which is odd as I would assume this is the only reason film was made in the first place. Even having just viewed it, I can’t think of a single stand-out scene. Yet I’m able to clearly recall entire sequences from any number of Jackie Chan films from twenty or even thirty years ago.
Which leads me to my ultimate point: Jackie Chan always had stories to tell. He used the detective and spy genres to tell energetic tales, invigorated with original – and often very funny – Kung Fu and stunts. That’s a very potent combination of factors. An engaging plot and interesting heroes, combined with inventive stunts is what drives the action genre. Tracers isn’t even a fair caper and the characters are only motivated by desperation to play out their sad roles: pawns in a game between the feds and the mob. You’ll forget about them as soon as the end credits roll.