Kickstart 4 – Reviewed

I’ll be honest, when I heard Kickstart 4 was about to see it’s release I was interested though not super eager to see it because I was utterly underwhelmed with Kickstart 3 as a whole. Of course it had it’s moments but I can honestly say for me K3 was “one-n-done”.

So when I got the email from iTunes that my Kickstart 4 Preorder was available for download (that’s right, I paid for it) I was pumped but not even approaching the off-the-charts “super-pumped” as they say. From the moment I pressed the play button on my AppleTV though, I was mesmerized by K4. The soundtrack is the best Moto soundtrack I’ve come across since the MotoXXX sonic-assaults.

Moto cinematography is clearly moving toward more and more heli-shoots, super high frame-rates in slow-mo and masterfully composed artsy pans but as far as traditionally shot moto goes, K4 hit me hard enough to call it Epic 2. That’s a huge compliment in my mind to both the Vurb crew as well as Donn Maeda. Epic made moto truly art with a clever soundtrack and Kickstart 4, in my opinion takes the Epic formula and refines it with more diverse content, more candid shots behind the scenes and higher energy while using proven crane-pans and great action-framing to prove that this era of moto-filming still has it’s place today.

After watching Kickstart 4 for the first time I wondered if maybe the real draw to it was it being so much better than K3 had had left me expecting it but nope. I’ve watched it about 4 times since and every viewing leaves me stoked, picking up on something I hadn’t caught before. I’m damn-near bewildered people, is it coming through?!

I do have one criticism though and that is the typography. The typeface used is terrible. Ok enough of that artsy-fartsy talk.

I know lots of people having been going off on how awesome Ronnie Mac and the Hahn/Seely pickup kit stuff was but without question the riding, shooting methods and stellar soundtrack are what make this “cineMOTOgraphy”. Not only did this flick leave me utterly “super-pumped”, I’d go so far as to say it’s a must-have. Is it capable of reaching the legendary status of Terrafirma? It’s far too early to make a claim like that but two things are certain, someday someone will ask if you saw Kickstart 4 and you’ll either say yes, get your ass kicked or be left kicking your own ass. So save yourself that ass-kicking and put this flick on your Santy-list.

It’s what I like to call a “go-to” moto film. Check out these beauties…