Speed to Spare

A lone stunt-driver—laconic, grease under the nails, eyes the color of burnt gasoline—drifts into a sun-scorched border town where carnival lights flicker like cheap miracles and the only escape route is a crumbling wooden ramp stretched over a moonlit quarry. He is hired by a cigar-chomping impresario to jump the chasm for a fast buck, but the local mechanic’s spunky kid sister—part tomboy, part angel—keeps loosening his lug-nuts of cynicism. Between pratfalls, pie-fights, and a runaway Model-T that thinks it’s a rodeo bronco, the film stitches silent-era slapstick to a daredevil ballet: every frame pirouettes on the edge of catastrophe, every gag is a heartbeat away from grace. When the climactic leap finally arcs across the night sky, the camera lingers on dust motes caught in headlight halos—tiny constellations celebrating the moment a man outruns his own shadow.