It would be hard to underestimate how dumb of a movie Tracers is. When Cam first chases down Nikki, she forces him to run through a parking garage with her, testing his free running skills. He slips on a car, and she dispenses the following wisdom: "Look where the car isn't." This is precisely the kind of nonsense screenwriters tend to come up with after Googling parkour for an hour, stuff that sounds mysterious but has no meaning whatsoever. Yet, despite its relentless predictability and stupidity, the film does feature surprisingly competent action thrills and a story that works itself out pretty nicely. At 94 minutes, you could do worse -- despite a glossier finish and a movie-star cast, the semi-recent bike messenger thriller Premium Rush (which also, inexplicably, involved Chinese gangsters) isn't quite as entertaining.

The whole concept of parkour is one that Hollywood seems desperate to make into a thing, yet they don't seem to have any idea how to do it. Even hearing the word "parkour" in a movie generates an instinctive eye roll (there's a reason it's grotesquely satisfying to see a parkour gang get shot up with a rocket launcher in Punisher: War Zone). Tracers adds nothing new to the formula, staging a number of chases across dilapidated city rooftops and on the deck of a rusty shipping boat, but director Daniel Benmayor (or, perhaps, Benmayor's second unit director) captures the action with decent clarity and energy. On his first job, Cam is attacked by another gang and escapes into a mall. The scene elicits unfortunate mental comparisons to Police Story, but it is undeniably kind of fun and tense to watch characters leaping through outlet stores as if the building was just a giant jungle gym. On a purely statistical or technical level, it seems very unlikely that Lautner did much of the parkour himself, but if trickery was involved, it's very good.

Of all the actors vaulted to instant fame by the Twilight franchise, Lautner has always seemed like the shakiest, unable to rid his line readings of a certain amount of woodenness. That said, he does appear to be growing as an actor, as his performance here is more natural than I've ever seen him (if far from perfect). It helps that he has very little to do in terms of character work, with the story plodding along through a familiar love triangle and the usual series of "unexpected" reveals and "last job" tensions, but he walks away looking better than his co-star Avgeropoulous, who rarely registers an emotion other than "angrily nervous", or Rayner, who never seems as threatening (or indeed, as interesting) as the movie seems to believe this is. It's a good thing that very little of Tracers' running time is devoted to exploring these characters on a deeper level.

Although the action is generally well-executed, Benmayor stumbles through some particularly awkward moments, such as a sex scene on a stairwell that is undoubtedly dusty, cold, uncomfortable, and dirty, and heavier dramatic moments that call on Lautner to work harder than he ought to. The screenplay contains a number of holes, including the fate of a key character near the end of the movie, plus more of that dumb "look where the car isn't"-type advice ("the real obstacles aren't out there, they're in your head") that gets funnier and funnier each time someone throws out another nugget. On one hand, there is no defending Tracers as a well-made movie, merely an adequate one that doesn't skimp on the kind of shenanigans the audience paid to see. On the other hand, I can't deny I kind of enjoyed myself watching this garbage -- just don't vault any walls to make a point of seeing it.

The Blu-ray
Tracers arrives with the theatrical poster intact, an image of Lautner bounding across a rooftop, gun in hand, with the title blazing in front of him. The single-disc release comes in an eco-friendly Viva Elite Blu-ray case that contains the movie disc as well as an UltraViolet Digital Copy code. There is also a cardboard slipcover featuring the same imagery as the actual case art, all of which is illustrated in an even more extreme near-monochrome than the movie itself.

The Video and Audio
Presented in 2.39.1 1080p AVC, Tracers looks great on Blu-ray. Although the movie was shot digitally on the RED Epic, it has a film-like appearance with visible grain that gives the image a bit of texture. Colors are muted through production design rather than with computers, which gives the movie a more vibrant appearance even if it sticks to gray and brown tones. Sound is an impressive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which really draws the viewer in during the movie's more intense action sequences, with pulse-pounding music and the echo of racing footsteps surrounding the viewer. As a modern movie with a modern presentation, Tracers is top-notch in that "new movie" way: it may not be surprising in any way, but it is satisfying. English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing and English and Spanish subtitles are also provided.

The Extras
Two brief extras are included. "The Art of Motion: The Making of Tracers" (11:13). After fast-forwarding through an excruciating discussion of what parkour is, the basic making-of beats are hit, including discussion of the story and the characters. The featurette is also unintentionally hilarious, in that a soundbyte of the director talking about "the intensity behind the eyes" plays over a particularly blank-eyed photograph of Lautner. The most interesting part of the piece is the discussion of the stuntwork, where they do indeed claim that Lautner did most of his own stunts. The other supplement is the Director's Pitch Reel (2:25), designed to show how the filmmaker would shoot the movie. Interestingly, this clip also includes an Exit Through the Gift Shop-style "anonymous" interview subject talking about the action being shown.

Trailers for The Hunger Games - Mockingjay: Part 1, John Wick, Mortdecai, Abduction, and Spare Parts play before the main menu. No trailer for Tracers is included. All of the extras are presented in HD.

Conclusion
As a movie, Tracers is unoriginal and uninspired, taking a host of hoary cliches and pasting them around some decent action. As a time-waster, it's decent. Do I actually recommend the movie? Nah, a rental will almost certainly be enough (if one is even warranted).