Motorbikes have been used by Hollywood in action movies for decades, so why do they still get it so wrong?

Hollywood and Motorbikes: a difficult relationship

We all know that action movies suspend reality without so much as a blush but why do they make such huge mistakes when it comes to motorbikes?

In recent years, the Mission: Impossible franchise has made extensive use of bikes as vehicles for action sequences and, in general, they have got it right. The same goes for Skyfall, the James Bond movie, which had one of the most realistic motorbike chase scenes. And let's not forget Arnie on his Harley Fat Boy in Terminator 2. Which is why it is all the more baffling that others get it wrong so often.

In most cases, the protagonist is seen performing unbelievable stunts, such as pulling off a front wheel stoppie, while spinning the bike round on the front wheel and simultaneously drawing a gun and being so accurate that they can hit two or three baddies chasing them, sending them flying in a fireball of ignited fuel. Criminals really need to re-think their henchman hiring policies because if they have been unable to shoot the hero while riding in a straight line, then they're really not up to scratch.

The biggest crime is dubbing the engine noise from one bike over the real soundtrack of the bike being used. The most recent fail comes in the new movie, The 355, which is already a preposterous piece of fiction without delving too deeply into all the details.

In one scene, Diane Kruger is being chased through a busy European arcade full of people before running into a street and knocking a guy off his motorcycle. She picks it up, thumbs the starter switch with attendant noises, performs a skid turn and roars off into the distance along the sidewalk, only to be felled by a single bullet from her pursuer that apparently hits the bike with such force that is sufficient to knock her off the bike!

OK, it's a movie, so we have to expect a large dose of artistic license. But the thing that really sticks in my craw - and I'm not alone: www.visordown.com also noticed - is that the bike she takes is an electric bike and those, as we all know, do not sound as if they have a four-cylinder petrol engine in them.

The bike is a Super Soco TC Max, which has a 125cc-equivalent motor in it: hardly the quickest machine to escape someone with a silenced gun but, I suppose in such situations, beggars can't be choosers.

But why dub the sound? Surely the high-pitched whine of an electric motor is just as cinematically thrilling and certainly more relevant in this day and age, especially in a European inner-city environment.

I'm not sure what this is indicative of: perhaps a result of those involved in post-production having no idea about motorbikes and simply assuming that they all sound like that. I can't imagine the makers of the bike, who will have undoubtedly supplied the bike, being too pleased that its true identity was completely masked.

Maybe it's just laziness and treating the audience as if they're stupid and couldn't process the fact that the motorbike is not making the normal motorcycle noises. Because everything else in the movie is so believable....!

So, while some films get it right, The 355 is not one of them. According to reviews of the film, the producers haven't got much else right, either: it's not exactly going to challenge the Oscars, by all accounts.