The 2008 TV movie “Knight Rider”, an update of the classic ’80s TV show starring David Hasselhoff and his super talking car, is considered a “back door pilot” — that is, NBC wants to see how its return to the airwaves is received before they commit to a potentially expensive TV series. The new series stars Justin Bruening as Mike Traceur, a former Army Ranger who kinda inherits the talking supercar, this time a Ford Shelby Mustang voiced by Val Kilmer, the replacement voice who infamously took over for Will Arnett after the latter was pulled because of his ties to GM, a rival of Ford’s.
When we first meet up with Mike Traceur, he’s in bed with two lovely women, just as his “investors” (our hero has a bit of a gambling problem) pounds on the door looking for their return on investment. Meanwhile, Stanford college professor Sarah Graiman (Deanna Russo) gets bad news concerning her father, a genius who had been working on — yes, you guessed it, KITT (aka Knight Industries Three Thousand). Charles Graiman is dead from a heart attack inflicted by a gang of international mercenaries (led by a great Greg Ellis, who is clearly being set up as a recurring series villain) intent on stealing his research, something called Prometheus. And now the mercs have turned their attention toward Sarah, unless KITT can get to her first. With no one to turn to, KITT takes her to Mike Traceur, her father’s go-to guy.
The two-hour (plus commercials) Knight Rider movie (or two-part pilot, if you prefer) is a nicely paced introduction to the new Knight Rider, the ride, and his rider. Screenwriter David Andron piles on the jokes, and every now and then it takes a dead body to remind us we’re not supposed to take the show and its premise of a talking supercar as pure cheese, which is a bit hard considering the show’s introductions to its main characters. KITT himself doesn’t really show off all of his abilities in the movie, and in fact I found the supercar to be a tad underwhelming. Shouldn’t he be able to do a whole lot more than change color and drive really fast across open terrain?
Other characters include serious, no-nonsense FBI Agent Carrie Rivai (Sydney Poitier), an African-American female who also happens to be a lesbian. Why this is important is anybody’s guess. She’s partnered with one of those odious wisecracking schoolboys who shouldn’t be wearing an FBI badge, much less carry a gun. Carrie doesn’t do a whole lot in the pilot, except act as a plot contrivance for the bad guys to keep finding Sarah and Charles who, obviously isn’t dead, or else you wouldn’t keep seeing him in the trailer. Another character is Traceur’s roommate, Dylan (Wayne Kasserman), who joins the fun at the end of the movie. I think he’s a mechanic, or a computer nerd, or a combination of those two.
The goal of the new Knight Rider is clearly to offer up a clean, fun show with the occasional dash of violence and gunplay. You can pretty much read this in the casting of young Justin Bruening, who despite the scruffy look, still comes across as slightly goofy. Although to his credit, Bruening does seem capable in the movie’s few hand-to-hand fight scenes; or at least, he sells it well enough. Deanna Russo is extremely easy on the eyes, and I would complain that her character is too old for Bruening’s Traceur, except I have spent hours scouring the Internet looking for her age, but amazingly, there is not a single mention of it anywhere. And yes, I do find that astounding.
The big question is, do we buy a Shelby Ford Mustang as a supercar? I can’t really say, even though I am a fan of the Mustang brand. There just isn’t anything really exotic about a Mustang, and this is actually made very apparent early during the title sequence, when a variation of the familiar Knight Rider theme is heard. (And yes, they did change up the theme for reasons I can’t fathom. It’s like changing up the Terminator theme. There just isn’t any reason to mess with a perfectly good thing.) And as previously mentioned, this new KITT just doesn’t seem to do a whole lot except drive really fast, fix bullet holes, and change color. I don’t really recall everything the original KITT was capable off, but it seemed to have a lot more abilities than this new incarnation.
The only problem I can see with Knight Rider becoming a TV series is this: it’s one of those clean, innocuous shows in a TV landscape populated by complex, serialized dramas like Lost and Heroes. Can it really survive? I would give it a better chance if Knight Rider was on a basic cable channel, where the demands for high ratings wouldn’t be so paramount, but on a big network like NBC, I just don’t see Knight Rider lasting very long, even if it does go to series. But hey, maybe I’m wrong, and in today’s dark times, what we really need is a fun show about a talking supercar.
Overall, if you enjoyed the original Knight Rider TV series with David Hasselhoff (who makes a cameo appearance at the end of the movie), you’ll certainly like the new version. Depending on your perspective, it’s either a good or a bad thing, but it does appear as if this is the same show, in style and tone, as the ’80s show — except transplanted to 2008 and given new wheels.
Steve Shill (director) / David Andron (screenplay)
CAST: Justin Bruening … Mike Traceur
Deanna Russo … Sarah Graiman
Sydney Tamiia Poitier … Carrie Rivai
Bruce Davison … Charles Graiman
David Hasselhoff … Michael Knight
Val Kilmer … K.I.T.T. (voice)
Greg Ellis … Welther
Wayne Kasserman … Dylan Fass
