Pre-Runners Beware!!!
The round-up on BajaFlo: Off-road racing from south of the border.
review by: Corey Zuccaro

Baja Truck racing has been gaining popularity lately, especially for those of us in the desert regions of America. The sport is kind of like NASCAR with A.D.D., missing its daily regimen of Riddlin.

BajaFlo is filmed in the style of your average skate video or Crusty Demons. It possesses excellent footage from the super bowl of off-road racing, the Baja 1000, as well as other major races through-out Mexico, California, and Southern Nevada. This documentary started off fairly hard-core, but keeping interest eventually became a challenge. Not that it was bad; it just failed to provide sufficient eye candy. Not enough hot chicks and hardly any wrecks. Though there were a few crashes, only a couple were worth mentioning. Not that I'm a masochist, but let's face it, as men, we like to see the morbid side of things usually.

Overall, director Michael Flores does a decent job capturing the high paced action that the sport offers. The cinematography was done beautifully by the steady hands of the video's various cameramen. I'm sure filming this sort of thing is not an easy task and the roll-over from inside the cockpit of one of the trucks was a very nice touch.

Some of the sport's all-stars including Larry Roeseler (10 Baja 1000 overall wins), Malcolm Smith (6 time Baja 1000 winner), and Troy Herbst (2004 Baja 1000 winner) spoke to their passion for the sport. Troy went on to explain a story of when he and his partner hit some unexpected obstacles in the road: "We hit these bulls at about 100mph, just scattered stuff everywhere...so we put some horns on the car for the weekend." I think I hear PETA coming. Look out Troy, run for your life!

The description on the back of the case states that this film was "three years in the making," which disappointed me due to the fact that the movie was only 35 minutes long. The soundtrack however was killer. These guys have great taste when it comes to selecting the right music to keep your eyes open. Too Rude, Kottonmouth Kings, Death on Wednesday, Sweetest Infection, and Magna-Fi are just a few of the artists providing music for this man and machine vs. nature epic. Big-B, however, needs to work on his Hip-Hop skills! While I have not invested enough time into his music, the track "Hooligan" sounded generic to the point that I was ready to pop a sedative just to get through it.

Watching this DVD I grasped onto the idea of how competitive Baja Racing can be. When it comes time to race, these long time friends become mortal enemies, racing each other but in the end, racing themselves. For all of you race junkies that have ethanol in your bloodstream, are addicted to dirt, sand and speed, I would definitely recommend this movie to you. If you are simply interested in finding out what all the fuss is about, go ahead and drop some cash down. You will probably like it.

I've attended the Terribles 250 race and witnessed first hand the fans and the parties that follow. Needless to say it's a wild time. This style of filming has been reproduced far too many times to be considered original.
I give this movie 2.5 out of 5 stars. It was good enough, it just wasn't great, and when you are trying to promote an alternative sport to the public, you really have to do something that has not already been done.

Review it yourself: movie trailer and ordering links online at: www.bajaflo.com