• Release Date: January 16, 2004
• Director: Joseph Kahn
• Cinematography: Peter Lyons Collister
• Tech: Panavision Panaflex Millennium / MTT Y2K Turbine Superbike
• Box Office: $46.5 Million Worldwide

Stepping away from the traditional, grounded framing of the early automotive genre, legendary music video director Joseph Kahn brought Torque into the forefront, a hyper-stylized, self-aware piece of pop-art cinema. Rejecting any semblance of physical reality, and operating instead on a neon-saturated, high-velocity logic that completely weaponizes early-2000s digital visual effects, cinematographer Peter Lyons Collister shot the film using ultra-saturated color filters, pushing primary blues, deep yellows and candy-apple reds to mirror the aesthetic of glossy commercial print ads. 

RELATED: [THE FILES] 170 : Bones (2001)

The Cast

• Martin Henderson as Cary Ford, the framed biker on the run.
• Ice Cube as Trey Wallace, the leader of the Reapers motorcycle gang out for vengeance.
• Monet Mazur as Shane, Ford’s tough-as-nails partner.
• Matt Schulze, Jaime Pressly and Adam Scott round out the adversarial and law enforcement ensemble.

The Box Office

• Production Budget: $40,000,000
• Domestic Earnings: $21,215,059 (Opening at #4 behind Along Came Polly) * International Earnings: $25,331,138
• Worldwide Cumulative Gross: $46,546,197

RELATED: [THE FILES] 164 : The Matrix (1999)

Featured Photo: New Line Cinema

Author Bio

Jael Rucker is the founder of Decked Out Magazine. She has previously worked as the Associate Commerce Editor at PureWow, focusing on analytics and trends to pitch stories and optimize articles that build and engage their audience. Her work has also been seen in Footwear News and WWD. Prior to 2024, she was the style and pop culture editor at ONE37pm for over three years, contributing numerous product reviews, brand profiles and fashion trend reports, which included interviewing Steph Curry, Snoop Dogg and more.