Now here's a weird project.

The Hire is another Dark Horse movie adaptation.  That's not the weird bit.  The weird bit is the source mateiral.  The Hire is a series of short films in which Clive Owen plays the Driver, a character hired for his top-notch driving abilities.  David Fincher is involved as a producer, and the directors include people like Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, Guy Ritchie, John Woo and Tony Scott.  One of them (Woo's film, Hostage) even won a film festival prize, albeit for "Best Action Short."

Except The Hire is commissioned by BMW.  And all the films centre on the Driver driving... a BMW.  You couldn't even really describe it as product placement, since without the BMW, there is no film.  They're extended adverts, existing in a weird grey area between art and commerce, and making no apology for it.

That hasn't stopped Dark Horse picking up the comics licence, and the result is this six issue miniseries in which various comics creators have a stab at... well, advertising BMWs.  But advertising them with style.  The full title, by the way, is BMWFilms.com presents The Hire #1.

Matt Wagner kicks off, with a nice little action story about the Driver being drawn into an elaborate scheme to get a character who is in no way Paris Hilton off the hook from her sex scandal.  It's a simple idea, it's nothing heavyweight, but it's well executed and it's enjoyable stuff.  In fact, trying to do a complete 22-page story based around driving cars around is going to be a tricky challenge for most creators.  Many artists seem to struggle with car chases.  Cars don't have body parts and you can't distort them too much - they're just big lumps of metal.  To sell the reader on speed, movement and weight calls for the sort of panel pacing and perspective techniques that all too many artists skip past in search of the chapter on how to draw a more convincing perineum.

Wagner, however, knows his stuff and pretty much manages to pull it off.  I still can't shake the feeling that car chases work much better in live action than they will in comics, even in the hands of a quality artist like this.  But if you must do them in comics, this is a pretty good pointer on how to make it work.

It's perfectly enjoyable.  It doesn't keep banging on about how great BMWs are (although, of course there's a BMW in almost every panel).  It's a neat little short story.  But it's also an advert, and that does kind of stick in the throat...

Rating: B

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