High Speed

For young Raf, who lives in a shabby suburb of London with his unemployed and permanently drunk father Mario, motorbike riding is everything. Raf uses every free minute he gets to tinker with his bike # a prototype he wants to win the world championship with one day! And Raf is quite convinced that he will. His best friend Ruben is crazy about bikes too, but he lacks Raf’s obsession with them # possibly because fate seems to have been kinder to Ruben. He comes from a reasonably well-to-do background, and also has the prettiest girl in the gang as his girlfriend -# Savannah, with whom Raf is secretly in love. While Mario does his best to get his son Raf to forget about bike riding and technical school so he can earn enough money for both of them with a full-time job, and even resorts to violence to get his own way, Ruben's father Tommy employs subtler means to turn his son into a respectable adult: he gives Ruben a smart sports car as a present. The attraction of speed on two wheels beats four, however. That same night Raf and Ruben race their bikes, and the risky venture is interrupted by the police. Raf is arrested, but Ruben bails him out # a last service as a friend, because it is now clear that the two young men are drifting apart. When Ruben accepts an office job, thereby betraying their joint dreams in Raf's eyes, the split is final. Mario has serious gambling debts, and one day he is brutally beaten up by a petty criminal named Morris. Raf sincerely loves his father, despite their conflicts, and wants to help him repay what he owes. Morris passes him on to the unscrupulous Silverstone, who runs the illegal racing scene, and he makes a deal with Raf: if he comes second in a forthcoming race then Silverstone's betting income will be secured and the father's debts will be forgotten about. Raf's bike is still unserviceable, and so he borrows Ruben's bike for the race without telling him. The racecourse is highly dangerous and a mass collision occurs. Raf is a...