This week’s Hump Day Holeshot is a slight departure from our normal YouTube video of some cool classic eating up the quarter mile (as well as whoever is in the competing other lane); this time around, we want to show you a complete work of digital fiction. Rockstar’s “Grand Theft Auto” video game series have stirred up such a whirlwind of controversy that the production company can’t help but continue with the franchise, making it more in-your-face, violent and gratuitous.
For those who still remember dumping quarters into stand-up arcade machines with names like “Dig Dug” and “Moon Patrol,” you might not be familiar with the “GTA” series: You’re a ne’er-do-well drug dealing, mass-murdering car thief who freely carjacks the citizens of Liberty City in the eternal pursuit to accrue limitless wealth, street credibility, and to escalate the ranks of the existing crime syndicate.
In the latest iteration of the game, you’re Niko Bellic, an immigrant from a fabricated Eastern Bloc nation who was fled home to join an equally fallible cousin here in the New World, only to fall back into bad habits. This 13-minute video, titled “Hard Charger,” is a fan-made machinima made from edited snippets of first-person game play along with some special mods to ramp up the graphics and details. For a non-commissioned work of digital art, it’s dang impressive.
Focusing on Niko and his hapless cousin, the very long and very NSFW (mainly language and violence) movie features Niko’s white ’69 Dodge Charger R/T (sorry guys, it’s not a HEMI) 4-speed, as he flees from Liberty City’s finest as well as what appears to be the National Guard and apparently the United States Army’s Armed Calvary. There’s a whole lot of vehicle manslaughter, more explosions than Michael Bay’s most intense wet dreams, and more flying Chargers than “Bullitt” and “The Dukes of Hazzard” combined.
This film, by all intents and purposes, is unadulterated car porn. Enjoy!