MUNICH: A sneak peek and two trailers later, BMW has finally released "The Escape" that marks the return of BMW Films.
The short film, screened at bmwfilms.com on Sunday, tells the story of a young woman named Lily (Dakota Fanning), whose life is put in danger as she is being sent to her final destination amidst an FBI probe of the bio genetics company that had created her. You see, Lily is the last living clone, and the FBI is putting the heat on the cloning company following the disappearance of its chief medical officer.
Just as Audi had The Transporter (played by Jason Statham and later by Ed Skrein on the big screen), the latest BMW film returns with Clive Owen as The Driver who has been hired by the cloning company to deliver Lily to her buyer. The Transporter series was in fact inspired by the BMW Films "The Hire" series.
As typical of BMW short films, there's plenty of extraordinary driving skills, thrills and spills on show as The Driver, together with a band of heavily armed mercernaries, try to evade the authorities in his quest to complete the mission. Other than the two-legged stars, there's the four-wheeled centrepiece played out by the latest G30 5 Series in the nearly 14-minute film, helmed by District 9 director Neill Blomkamp.
The 540i deployed in the aggressive driving action scenes came in stock standard form except for the use of rally brakes so that the car is able to do skids and slides in a precise way. The 540i uses a three-litre straight-six mill producing 340hp and 450Nm of torque. In all-wheel drive form, the 540i powers from 0 – 100kph in a mere 4.8 seconds.
A BMW spokesman said the "The Escape" was created to pay tribute to the original. And whether more such high-budget short films are coming remains up in the air.
Launched in 2001, BMW Films’ “The Hire” was a series of eight online short films starring Owen as an enigmatic driver for hire. Each film was a unique story, with David Fincher and Ridley and Tony Scott acting as executive producers. The films were helmed by acclaimed directors John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Wong Kar Wai, Guy Ritchie, Alejandro González Iñárritu, John Woo, Joe Carnahan and Tony Scott, and featured stars like Madonna, Gary Oldman, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, F. Murray Abraham and James Brown.
Available only online and released four years before the invention of YouTube, the films were critically-acclaimed and 15 years later still have a cult following.
