The Film (4/5)

    Turbo Kid is a mish-mash of an 8 bit video game aesthetic, 80's post apocalyptic cinema (think the Road Warrior, but also quite a few of it's Italian knock-offs), and a good dose of full on splatter. The film stars Munro Chambers as the Turbo Kid, a comic book obsessed teenage boy trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland on his own. One day while scavenging for supplies he meets Apple, an odd young woman who begins to follow him around. At first annoyed by her presence he begins to warm up to her, and they become companions in the waste. Along the way the pair team up with Frederic (Aaron Matthews) a wasteland cowboy, and arm wrestling champ, to fight against the evil overlord Zeus and his minions including the Lord Humongous-esque Skeletron.

    There isn't much in the way of plot in Turbo Kid, but that is fine. The film works on a few different levels than it's story.  It has lots of really interesting and effective action set pieces with a specific eye set towards intense gory moments. The FX here are quite solid and appear to be a mix of practical and CGI that ends up being quite effective. It also is quite a humorous affair relying heavily on jokes dated around 1980's references (think retro video games, and video store staples). If the Fallout video game series set their world as an apocalypse that rose around a 1950's American worldview, Turbo Kid's is what would happen if the bombs dropped over mid-1980's America.

      Finally, the characters and performances. Though the characters in the film are satirical stereotypes of the characters that typically populate post-apocalyptic cinema, they are a fun and interesting bunch to spend an hour and a half with. Special attention should be given to Laurence Leboeuf who plays the character of Apple, or essentially the Rainbow Brite of the wasteland. She appears to be the optimistic colorful center of the place, and is the most fun and interesting character of Turbo Kid.

    Turbo Kid is honestly a film I can't recommend to a random person on the street. However, this is a film for fans, by fans, and I found the enthusiasm for the material infectious. I would easily recommend this to fans of post-apocalyptic cinema, and those who have spent enough time in the genre to watch everything from the Road Warrior to 2020 Texas Gladiators.

Audio/Video (5/5)

    Epic Pictures presents Turbo Kid with an excellent MPEG-4 1080p AVC encoded 2:35:1 transfer. Detail is excellent throughout the presentation, black levels are deep, and colors are both natural and pop from the screen where they need to. 

    The audio is presented with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track in English. The track is quite solid with dialogue, score, and ambient effects coming through nicely with excellent separation of detail.

Extras (4/5)

    Epic Pictures have put together an excellent 3 disc edition of Turbo Kid including 1 Blu-ray, 1 DVD, and an extra DVD of bonus features. The movie itself comes with a commentary by RKSS.  The bonus features includes a making of Q & A's, the original short film the film was based off, short documentaries from the set of the film, and multiple galleries including design sketches, fan art, official stills, and more.  Just a minor nitpick, but the synth based soundtrack to the film is so much fun it would have been great to have a CD copy as a 4th disc, but as it is the set is fully loaded.

Overall

    Turbo Kid is a post-apocalyptic splatter masterpiece for a new generation. It is a blast to watch, and is certainly going to end up in my rewatch pile. The A/V on the Blu-ray looks and sounds excellent, and is loaded up with extras. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.