REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR (Chris Paine). 90 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (October 14). See listing. Rating: NNN
Five years ago, Who Killed The Electric Car? felt absolutely essential.
The story of General Motors’ EV-1 played like a creation myth in reverse: a corporation manufactures an ecologically responsible car, realizes that car makes all its other vehicles look terrible and recalls and destroys the entire fleet with the encouragement of the oil-friendly Bush administration. Director Chris Paine’s outrage and horror at seeing his own vehicle repossessed by GM wasn’t just powerful cinema, it was documentary gold.
Now that there’s a market for environmentally conscious vehicles – thanks to the near-death of the American auto industry and greater demand for greener technology – Paine takes something of a victory lap with Revenge Of The Electric Car, which was the opening-night gala of the Planet In Focus festival earlier this week.
Following the companies racing to be first to market their own eco-mobiles, Paine drops in on the construction of the Chevy Volt, promoted by Big Auto veteran Bob Lutz, and checks out Tesla Motors’ sportier, pricier Model S, the baby of colourful PayPal founder Elon Musk. He also visits an engineer, Greg “Gadget” Abbott, who’s converting existing vehicles from gasoline to electric motors in a California warehouse.
It’s a more linear and coherent work than its predecessor, but it lacks the passion and fury that made that film seem so urgent. Maybe that’s just an indication of how the paradigm has shifted.
